Tiny Buddha

Tag: Happiness

  • Our Lives Are Measured in Love, Not Numbers

    Our Lives Are Measured in Love, Not Numbers

    “In the end, these are the things that matter most: How well did you love? How fully did you live? How deeply did you let go?” ~Buddha

    Last year my yoga teacher told a story in class about Hanuman, an ancient Hindu god depicted as a monkey. When asked what he was devoted to, Hanuman opened his chest and there were Sita and Ram, sitting on his heart, always with him. He was their greatest devotee.

    The story stuck with me.

    “What do I hold closest to my heart?” I asked myself quite often, and I was not getting the answer I wanted. Where was the dream I held close to my heart? Was I truly devoted to love, joy, and peace, or just appearing to be?

    What I observed was that numbers subtly defined my life.

    Numbers. Money, time, days until, days since, age, weight, calories, date, GPA, mile time, social media likes, followers, lovers, breakups, countries visited, height, miles driven, time left, time passed, books read, books to read, miles run, seconds in a handstand.

    I felt like I was living a quantitative life.

    I enjoy math and I think science is fascinating. Numbers have so much to offer the world, but they should not be playing a role in how we measure the value of our lives.

    Numbers are everywhere, and they offer us an opportunity to look at the decisions we are making. Numbers can help us set goals, assess our progress, and recognize areas for growth.

    There is so much that can be measured in numbers, but this realization offered me an amazing insight.

    Often, a number cannot define what matters most. It has to be expressed with words and felt with the heart.

    Laughter. Connection. Love. Organic, raw experiences. Spontaneity. Forgiveness. Adventure. These are all things that numbers cannot distinguish.

    As a human, it does not matter how old I am; my age is irrelevant if I am happy.

    As a twenty-four-year-old, it does not matter how many relationships I have had that did not work out.

    What matters is that I am willing to feel and open my heart to another person. That I am willing to learn and make mistakes and be grateful for all that has come out of the relationships I have been in. What matters is whether I have been able to forgive others and myself for the mistakes we have made.

    As a traveler, it does not matter the number of countries I have visited.

    What matters are the experiences I have collected under my belt that become the keys to unlock doors I may encounter in the future. What matters are the genuine connections I have made, the laughter I have shared, with people twenty years older and twenty years younger, who speak a different language than me.

    As a social media participant, it does not matter how many likes I get on a photo. What matters is if I am using social media as a platform for authenticity, connection, and positivity.

    As a yoga teacher, it does not matter how many people come to my class. What matters is that my students walk away feeling light and love.

    As a runner, it does not matter if I run for twenty minutes or two hours. What matters is the intention of treating my body as my home, where I live and doing my best to take care of my home.

    As a yogi, it does not matter how long I meditate or can hold a handstand. What matters is union, my breath connecting my body with my mind.

    As a woman, it does not matter how much I weigh. What matters is that I feel healthy. Health is a state of wholeness, happiness, and vibrancy in all aspects of our lives—physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

    The point is not to eliminate numbers, but to be aware of the purpose that they serve.

    Celebrate birthdays. Make countdowns. Set goals. But don’t fall into the habit of defining yourself by your numbers, or comparing yours to someone else’s. Two lives can be equally valuable with completely different sets of measurements.

    Within every human there is a place that is love in its purest form. This is where we store the wishes we place upon pennies before tossing them into fountains. It’s the place where we hold memories that make our eyes sparkle and our hearts beat with joy. The place inside us where we dream big and without fear. It is a love for ourselves and a love for all that is.

    If there is anything that defines us, it is this love.

    Most importantly, numbers are not necessary to define this present moment. We don’t need any math to appreciate the moment we are in right now. Everything is simply as it should be.

  • 4 Ways We Resist Life and Cause Ourselves Pain (And How to Stop)

    4 Ways We Resist Life and Cause Ourselves Pain (And How to Stop)

    Peaceful woman

    “When fear wakes up inside, and there is no place to run away or hide from it, consider it a gift. In all the glory of that discomfort, know there is refuge in surrender.” ~Erin Lanahan

    When I was a freshman in college, I had a wise English teacher. Through everything he taught, he would always circle back to the theme that “life is a constant cycle of tension and release.”

    I heard him say these words over and over, but I didn’t really listen. I wasn’t ready to yet. Still, this simple message always stuck in my memory.

    I used to suffer from anxiety, and trying to predict and control my environment seemed like a viable way to eliminate most, if not all, of what made me anxious.

    I used to experience a great deal of anxiety about being accepted by others. For as long as I can remember, I’ve harbored this painful idea that I am distinctly different from everyone else; and I felt like my differences would hold me back from truly connecting with others and gaining their acceptance.

    Though my anxiety stemmed from the fear of not being accepted, I didn’t realize this consciously. When I was in a bout of anxiety, I felt fearful about everything.

    Since I didn’t feel safe in the world, I tried to manipulate my environment in an attempt to reduce my pain, but the world wasn’t the problem. I wish I had known then that there was nothing I could alter outside of myself that would heal something inside, but I naively tried to do just that.

    In order to keep my anxiety at bay, I would make sure I always had some form of an escape route so I could temporarily slip away from the pain of being myself. I used distraction in the form of television, surfing the Internet, or reading to distance myself from my anxious thoughts.

    I would even get neurotic about things like the amount of light in the room I was in, or needing to be in open spaces. I thought the conditions of my environment dictated my safety.

    Because of this, I would avoid situations where I could not take the steps I wanted to control my environment. Because I developed such strict standards for deeming my environment “safe,” I missed out on a lot.

    I use to avoid social situations. Being around others made the critical voices in my head much louder. I would interpret other people’s silence as disapproval, and I hated having nothing to distract me from this pain. The more I avoided social situations, the harder it became to cope with being around others. Even just going to class could trigger a panic attack.

    Attempting to control my life and to eliminate all painful situations did not cure my anxiety. If anything, it made it worse. So often the dread of doing things I didn’t want to do was ten times more painful than the actual task itself, but I was too caught up in my suffering to realize this.

    The more I tried to push out the bad things in my life, the more I reinforced that they were intolerable, and the worse things began to seem. Slowly, this avoidance trap made my life smaller and smaller. Things became more and more painful, until I felt uncomfortable even at home.

    When my anxiety was at its worst, I began seeing a therapist. She asked me to try to lean toward the things I was afraid of instead of away from them. She told me to accept my pain.

    She helped me understand that the feeling of fear is much worse than the things we fear themselves. She asked me to study the painful thoughts and feelings that I would always try to push away. She told me to accept and just ride the wave of rising and diminishing discomfort.

    This realization made me wonder how much I was unnecessarily suffering.

    How many things in life was I making worse than they had to be? If life really was a constant cycle of tension and release, was I intensifying my hard times by psychologically resisting them instead of just surrendering to them?

    I thought on this and realized that there are some negative things in my life I have control over. For example, if I feel like someone in my life is treating me unfairly, I can choose to speak up and voice this feeling.

    In situations like these, I can take action and make my situation better, but this won’t always be the case. Some situations will be beyond my realm of control. I will never be able to control being stuck in traffic, when I’ll come down with a cold, or whether or not my car will break down. I knew I had to change my relationship with these types of situations.

    I learned that one of my biggest points of suffering came from resisting unexpected things that used up time I’d intended to use in other ways.

    I used to get myself so worked up on nights when I would unexpectedly have to work late and miss out on what I had planned for that evening. Then, not only would I have to deal with tackling the unwanted task(s), but also my self-inflicted pain from thinking how terrible my situation was.

    I really couldn’t control the situation, but I could control my thoughts.

    It wasn’t fun having to change my plans, but it wasn’t worth the stress headache and dismal mood.

    I decided I would start practicing acceptance when life gave me lemons, just accepting where I was on life’s cycle of tension and release. In doing so, I knew one of my biggest challenges was going to be staying aware, so I decided to look for patterns that would help me do this.

    Below are four things signs that I am resisting my life, causing myself to suffer unnecessarily. If you’ve done any of these, as well, recognizing these patterns can help you suffer a lot less going forward.

    1. Self-victimization

    When things don’t go your way, do you feel bad for yourself and dwell on how unfair things are? This is a surefire way to get stuck in a negative feeling. I know; I’ve done this quite a bit.

    When I get dealt something I really don’t want to deal with, I often default to self-victimization. I start thinking, “Why me?” Or, “This always happens to me.”

    I notice myself feeling like negative things happen more to me than to other people. Logically, I know this isn’t the case, but this is a seductive escape that allows me to wallow in self-pity instead of tackling the challenge of acceptance.

    2. Blame

    When something comes up that you don’t want to deal with, do you find yourself blaming others? Do you become less compassionate for the people around you and amplify their faults?

    When life hands me lemons, I start blaming everyone around me who I think contributed to the problem. I think of what else others could have done that would have prevented me from being in the unsavory situation.

    It’s self-centered of me, and in doing so I overlook everyone else’s suffering but my own. I blame others instead of accepting that sometimes things just don’t play out the way I wanted them to. Blame also keeps me stuck in negativity instead of challenging myself to just surrender to what is.

    3. Rushing

    When I find myself rushing, there’s a good chance I’m resisting my reality. Sometimes when I rush it’s because I’m short on time, but more often, I rush when I find a task particularly unpleasant and I’m trying to get it over with as quickly as possible.

    Sometimes I rush because I am trying to make sure I have enough time to relax. I often fear if I don’t get enough time I won’t be able to recharge and handle the stress of the next day. I’ve found that sometimes I don’t get enough time, but I always seem to make it through regardless.

    When I rush, I deny my task the proper amount of time it requires to be done well, and my quality of work is quite poor. Rushing also puts me in a bad frame of mind and stresses me out unnecessarily.

    Try to notice the next time you’re rushing. What are the circumstances? Do you need to be rushing because you are actually short on time? Or are you just trying to spend less time in an undesirable circumstance?

    4. Holding my breath

    Think about the last time you were doing something you really didn’t want to be doing. How were you breathing? Were you breathing freely and deeply? Or shallowly and strained?

    Checking in with my breath has proven to be a great way of keeping myself aware. Nine out of ten times, when I am resisting what is, I start to hold my breath (literally), or at least I don’t breathe as slowly and deeply as I would if I were relaxed.

    Taking deep breaths is great, because it tricks my body into thinking I’m in a relaxed situation, and over time I start to feel like I am in one. This makes settling into acceptance a little easier.

    —

    When discomfort arises in our lives it is counterintuitive to do nothing, but not all struggle is a question to be answered. If we view life as a cycle of tension and release, being in a period of tension isn’t that bad because it’s promised to be followed by a period of release.

    Like a Chinese finger trap, the harder we try to get away from the bad things in our lives, the tighter their hold on us becomes. When we surrender to reality instead of wrestling with it, it frees up our energy to be used in better ways.

    When our minds aren’t tied up complaining about how bad our circumstances are, we can shift our awareness to the good in the situation. We can focus on being in a comfortable environment, we can be grateful for the opportunity to practice acceptance, and we can think about what good things await us after the tense period comes to a close.

    Giving up the urge to try and control my life has really been a wonderful experience. I’ve given up my rigidness in trying to force the bad out of my life. In doing so, I’ve invited the unpredictable bad in, but this has also enabled me to invite in the unpredictable good.

    I’ve come to accept that my life will never be predictable, the good or the bad, but really, I wouldn’t want it any other way.

  • You Never Know What Someone Is Going Through, So Be Kind

    You Never Know What Someone Is Going Through, So Be Kind

    “Give everyone the benefit of the doubt today…” ~Lori Deschene, Tiny Buddha’s 365 Tiny Love Challenges

    Here’s something I’ve learned firsthand: No matter how someone looks or acts, you truly never know what’s happening in their lives.

    Five years ago my husband Walter was dying from cancer. Twice during a thirteen-month period he was hospitalized, thirty minutes away from our home.

    I spent about ten hours a day at the hospital, plus travel time during those long weeks. I was a wreck.

    I don’t know what I looked like to the outside world. Inside, I felt impatient, angry, sad, out of my mind with grief, and tired. Still, I had to interact with the world like everyone else.

    I had to put gas in the car, go to the bank, buy dog food, and grocery shop. I had to walk through the world and be polite or wait my turn, when all I wanted to do was break down and cry or yell. Everything felt hard and surreal.

    During those times when Walter was hospitalized I got into a routine. In the morning I would stop at my local coffee shop to get a latte on the way to the hospital.

    For some unknown reason during this time I also started craving banana cream pie—it was a bright spot in my day. On my way home from the hospital I would stop at the pie shop near my house. This routine helped keep me sane.

    What I will never forget about the time period, and what stands out the most, are the small kindnesses that strangers and friends offered me.

    One morning I was running late to get to the hospital, and when I went to get coffee there was a long line—almost out the door.

    I knew my husband would be waiting for me, wondering where I was. I felt really stressed about it.

    Out of desperation I asked the person directly ahead of me in line if they would mind if I went before them because I had to get to the hospital. He said no problem and then asked everyone else in line if I could hop to the front.

    Everyone said yes, even though I’m sure we all needed that morning coffee equally.

    It may sound like a small thing, but I will never forget it. It helped me feel supported, got me on my way, and dropped my stress level down a notch. When you’re already in overwhelm mode, that’s huge.

    At the pie shop, the same woman worked the evening shift during the week. One day, while she was boxing up my piece of pie, she started asking me questions about myself. I gave her a thumbnail sketch of what was happening.

    She handed me the pie that night and wouldn’t take any money or a tip—it was on her, she said.

    Every night after that, she would box-up a super-sized piece of banana cream to go. Again, it might seem like a small thing, but it meant more to me then I can ever explain. In the midst of the bad stuff that was happening there were so many small acts of kindness that filled me with gratitude.

    We really never know what’s going on in someone’s life—what news they might have gotten that day, whether they just lost their job or have a loved one who is ill. That’s why it’s so important to lead with kindness as often as we can.

    Give everyone the benefit of the doubt instead of taking something they say or do personally.

    I know there were times that my reaction to the normal everyday annoyances was way out of proportion to what was actually taking place. I was doing the best that I could at that time to be polite and hold it together.

    Now, whenever I get frustrated or annoyed with someone’s actions, I remind myself that I don’t really know what’s going on in their life. I try to take a breath, not take it personally, and trust that they are doing the best they can.

    You may never know how much a small act of kindness will affect someone.

    I can tell you though that for me, the kindness of strangers and friends kept me going during one of the worse times of my life—they were a lifeline. I continue to remember them and will for the rest of my life. I truly believe acts of good will last a lifetime.

  • How to Live Out Loud: 8 Lessons for an Authentic, Empowered Life

    How to Live Out Loud: 8 Lessons for an Authentic, Empowered Life

    Woman on car vacation travel waving

    “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

    Growing up, I was shy, bullied often, or ignored because I couldn’t stand up for myself.

    My parents, immigrants from Colombia, South America, bequeathed me an inheritance of brown skin, brown eyes, and a language full of emotion. Nothing like the world I was thrown into.

    I started kindergarten not knowing a word of English, trying to find my place in a sea of white faces. I stood out like a fly in milk.

    I was teased and ostracized in class and during recess, until the nuns stopped the torture. I grew up smart and pretty, and over the course of my life, that got me by. I learned to hide my self-doubt behind my looks and mind.

    For years, I tried to adapt to a world I felt I didn’t belong to. I felt like a chameleon, turning a different shade of color based on the situation.

    The pressure to fit it was greatest after college. I bought into the “more is better” philosophy. Status and material possessions became my goal. I became successful playing a game I thought I was winning while losing my individuality and creative spirit.

    A Shift To Authenticity

    As I have advanced in age, I have learned a few things about being authentic. My outlook on life changed after the birth of my son and the two years I spent as a full-time mother. I no longer craved attention or felt the need to belong. The playfulness of my childhood returned to my life through my son.

    Reflecting back on this critical phase of my life, I realized that what brought me into a mature assessment of my values was a combination of three things.

    First, I spent time in meditation and quiet reflection, often in nature. Being in nature connected me to a spiritual source within me, and that became the origin of my personal power and confidence.

    Second, I remembered how to play. It may sound frivolous, but play is learning. When you play, you tap into joy and creativity, uninhibited by judgments and criticism. Play opens the imagination, and this is the beginning of manifesting your dreams.

    Third, I began to spend more time on what I cared about and less time on what I call my “shoulds.” I can always tell when I am out of harmony with my true nature by asking myself if I am doing something because I feel I should do it or because it inspires and energizes me.

    How to Create An Authentic Life

    Currently in my fifties, I now make choices that align with my values, even if it displeases someone else. I continue the practices I began when my son was young to stay attuned to what matters most to me in the present moment.

    I learned that unless I placed value on myself, no one would value me. I’ve become less tolerant of ignorance, unkindness, and victimization.

    I have been able to identify a set of practices that sustain and nourish me. These practices lead to an authentic, empowered life.

    Because I practice these lessons, I live an extraordinary life traveling between two countries, doing work that is location independent, and having the flexibility to express myself creatively in ways that benefit others too.

    Lesson 1: Begin to see yourself as more than what you have allowed yourself to believe.

    Spiritual activist Marianne Williamson wrote, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” I see how true this is for me.

    Reach beyond your comfort zone to discover the hidden potential within. Do whatever you find difficult to do, and discover that you possess more power than you had allowed yourself to believe.

    I learned this lesson walking through the rainforests of Ecuador with a family of shamans. There I was, sweat pouring down my face, frizzy hair and mud all over me, trying to keep up with five native shamans on a “walk” through the Ecuadorian rainforest.

    I would never have believed I could do this. I always thought I wasn’t strong enough or brave enough to go into a raw and natural setting and survive. I came out of the experience transformed, asking myself, “If I can do this, then what else am I capable of?” That lesson helps me tap into my power to overcome the challenges that I face every day.

    Lesson #2: Make a commitment and trust that life will hand you the curriculum required to meet it.

    It takes courage to commit to something bigger than yourself.

    You may be committed to being a change agent or building a business that has a significant social impact. You may be a community activist taking on the politics of making change happen in your community. You are thrust into a leadership commitment that exceeds your capacity, but because you have the vision and the drive, you step up to the challenge.

    These larger commitments force you to adapt to the challenge and to bring forth all of your creative potential in service of a larger vision. Life becomes the classroom, and the commitment becomes your coursework.

    For years, I dreamed of building a retreat center in Ecuador, a haven for individuals to reflect and renew their lives and to resolve the unresolved questions of their lives. Every time I thought of doing this, the daunting nature of such a project made me take a step back. After years of dreaming, I decided the time was now to commit, or this would always remain an unfulfilled dream.

    I could not remain the most comfortable version of myself, the one that played it safe, and succeed at this project. I had to develop my capacities as a leader, a project manager and a visionary to manifest this dream. The project became my curriculum, and Ecuador became my classroom.

     Lesson #3: Courage is the active engagement of fear.

    Fear is the one thing that stops you from living an empowered, authentic life. You wonder what people may think of you, or you fear losing acceptance and relationships if you are vulnerable and authentic. You listen to the gremlin telling you that you are not enough. You stop trying and growing.

    You have three choices: You can allow fear to stop you, ignore it, or engage and transform it into the energy that propels you forward.

    Think of fear as a message to pay attention, telling you that there is something you need to address. For example, your fear might be showing you that you need to challenge your people-pleasing nature, or you need to work on your self-confidence.

    Engaging your fear positively allows you to anticipate problems and find solutions. It causes you to focus on the essentials to achieve remarkable outcomes. Distractions fall away, and you can accelerate your goals.

    Courageously engaging your fear allows you to transform its negative energy into the positive energy of movement.

    Lesson #4: Become the center of your universe.  

    What does it mean to become the center of your universe? It means you make a choice for your well-being first and foremost. It is a conscious choice for self-care. It is a way of loving yourself.

    You begin making healthy choices such as choosing to get enough sleep instead of staying up all night. You choose to eat healthy and nourishing food instead of skipping meals or eating junk food. You choose to have life-affirming, respectful, and loving relationships. These are all ways to express how much you value yourself.

    This expression of self-love is the foundation for self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-care. Without it, you cannot create an authentic and empowered life.

    Lesson #5: To grow, you must embrace the fullest expression of yourself. 

    If you let others define you, you will never know yourself and you will never find peace and happiness. You will always live someone else’s version of your life story. You will never know your beauty and greatness by being someone you are not. The incongruence between how you live and who you are will cause dissonance, distress, and disease.

    Seek out people and activities that bring forth that creative expression of your heart and soul. If you want to go on a cross-country trip or spend a month taking cooking classes in Italy, find a way to do that. If you want to stay close to home, learn a craft, play a musical instrument, or attend literary lectures. These all have the potential of sparking your creative potential.

    These are not frivolous pursuits, although some may claim that they are. These are ways of opening yourself up to the inspiration that leads to an authentic life.

    The things that inspire you will attract the right relationships, the right work, and the right life for you. 

    Lesson #6: Myth: You have a purpose in life. Wrong!

    Seek self-knowledge; discover your true nature and purpose will find you. As you age, what you care about will change. That’s how you grow and evolve. You will discover that there are many ways, not just one way, to express yourself authentically.

    Be attentive of when you feel depleted or when you feel yourself struggling. Notice when you feel energized and inspired, when your passion is ignited. These are all clues to what you want to include or exclude in your life.

    Asking, “What is my purpose?” leads you through a maze to nowhere. Stop looking for your purpose and start looking deeply in the mirror to know yourself first.

    Purpose is the result of being authentic and living in harmony with that.

    Lesson #7: Engagement coupled with reflection brings clarity.

    A good friend recently asked me, “How did you decide to move to Ecuador, even part-time? I’m trying to make some changes in my life, and I don’t know how to begin.”

    I thought about it and realized I had combined two ways of being that seem to be in opposition of one another, but together they form a powerful method to go through transitions.

    I thought a lot about what I wanted and I spent time observing myself here and in Ecuador to find the truth about what I wanted out of my life now. I tried new things, like living in Ecuador for three months and leveraging technology to be able to work remotely, to see how I could design this new life that was calling to me.

    This combination of reflection and action is like creating the journey, one step at a time, as you’re walking it. Simply reflecting on a change doesn’t work any better than thoughtlessly moving from one activity to the next.

    Taking one action, reflecting on it, adjusting, and then taking another action creates the steps to living an authentic life. Eventually, you will arrive at your destination.

    Lesson #8: Make curiosity your greatest ally.

    Being curious is opening yourself up to something new. Leading an authentic, empowered life means learning new things about yourself and the world all the time.

    It requires a high level of self-awareness and an enhanced quality of attention to gather the insights that teach you how to design your extraordinary life. Curiosity is the way you engage life as the adventure it is.

    —

    I believe that until we become authentic in the way we work and live, we will not be able to find real joy, fulfillment, and happiness. It is only through an authentic life that we can empower ourselves to do the work we were meant to do in the world.

    If you feel like you are leading a stranger’s life, you probably are. You can change that. It takes courage and being around the kind of people who appreciate and love you.

    Everything you believe about yourself holds the possibility of being less than the truth. What if those beliefs are the source of your unhappiness? Consciously choose to believe something more empowering, and it will change your life.

    You deserve to be you in your fullest expression. You deserve to wake up each day feeling confident and healthy and loved. It starts with you. Start now.

  • Why Playing Hard to Get Doesn’t Work (and What Does)

    Why Playing Hard to Get Doesn’t Work (and What Does)

    Happy Couple

    “Confidence isn’t ‘They will like me.” It’s ‘I’m perfectly fine if they don’t.’ ” ~Unknown

    After the death of my husband, I spent my thirties as a single mother of four children. It was a tough decade. I often felt lonely and frustrated, and dating was a nightmare.

    I constantly gorged on self-help books, hoping that they’d reveal whatever my “problem” was so that I could fix it and finally find the love I so desperately craved.

    Many of these well-intentioned books contained dating tips designed to make someone fall in love with me. They invited me to steal hearts, catch and keep partners, and otherwise engineer my romantic success by adopting certain behaviors considered to be desirable.

    Could it really be as simple as getting off the phone first, not returning a phone call, or saying that I was busy even though I was home folding laundry? Since I really wanted love and it was for the good of all, I thought, “Why not? All’s fair in love and war, right?” The thing is, these strategies never worked for me.

    Perhaps you can relate. You want to share your life with someone, and you’re more than willing to do what it takes to make that happen. Maybe you hope to learn a few easy hacks so that you can check finding love off your to-do list and get on with your life.

    We’d all like to find a fast and easy way to get the things we want, myself included. Unfortunately, looking for the easy way didn’t work for me, and it wasn’t until I accepted that and got down to business that I attained any results worth achieving.

    The problem with relying on dating strategies like these is that they only address behaviors, not beliefs. Your behaviors are important, but it’s your beliefs that drive them.

    If you don’t address the source of your behaviors, lasting change won’t be possible and your behaviors and beliefs won’t be consistent. This is why some people seem “fake” and other people who do the exact same things come off as genuine.

    Many relationship books encourage us to behave in ways that are consistent with having confidence and valuing ourselves highly. If you don’t truly value yourself, acting like you do might mask this fact, but eventually the truth will come out.

    No amount of game playing will turn you into a high-value person. Believing in your own value and acting accordingly will.

    Take an honest look at yourself with a true desire to discover, not criticize yourself. Be loving and gentle with yourself and be curious.

    Are you treating yourself well? Do you establish and keep good boundaries in your relationships and at work? Do you stand up for yourself when you need to? Are you taking good care of your body, finances, and home?

    Listen to the thoughts you have about yourself. Are you kind to yourself in your own mind? Do you beat yourself up constantly? What do you truly believe about your own worth? Whatever your beliefs are, your relationships will eventually reflect them, regardless of which dating strategies you try.

    If you know that you aren’t valuing yourself highly, address that instead of pretending in an attempt to convince someone else to value you. A person of high value will naturally command respect, without counting the minutes until it’s acceptable to return a text or agonizing about whether or not to give someone a call.

    How can you begin to value yourself and show up in the world as a confident person? Will you eat healthy foods? Get enough rest and exercise for your own well-being, not just so that you can look good on dates? How about saying no to working late for the fourth day in a row and cancelling plans with your friends (again)?

    Are you willing to set boundaries for how you will be treated in relationships? What do you do when your date is late, doesn’t call when he or she promised, or is inconsiderate? Do you ignore it and hope they will change or do you address the issue?

    Choosing to treat yourself well isn’t selfish; it’s necessary for a healthy self-esteem. We all value people who are confident and value themselves. People will treat us the way we teach them to. It’s never too late to make a new choice.

    Games like not calling or playing hard to get are intended to help us behave how a naturally confident person would behave. It’s always better to cultivate genuine confidence than it is to fake it. True confidence comes from valuing ourselves.

    Once we reach adulthood, it’s our responsibility to create the lives we wish to lead. Accepting this responsibility can be daunting at times, but it’s one of the most empowering things we can do for ourselves. No one else can do this for us, as much as we wish they could.

    When we step up and decide to lead the best lives possible, commit to being the people we want to become, and refuse to back down when it’s hard, we will value ourselves more highly and inspire others to do the same.

    Ultimately, this is much more rewarding than pretending to be busy on Saturday night and refusing to take phone calls at certain times.

    As for me, I finally learned how to make better choices and found real love instead of relying on tips and tricks. It has made all the difference.

  • How to Turn Your Sensitivity into Your Biggest Strength

    How to Turn Your Sensitivity into Your Biggest Strength

    “Never apologize for being sensitive or emotional. Let this be a sign that you’ve got a big heart and aren’t afraid to let others see it. Showing your emotions is a sign of strength.” ~Brigitte Nicole

    We have a problem in the modern world that needs to be addressed.

    It impacts huge numbers of the population but is so ingrained in our culture that it’s easy for us to overlook how dangerous it can be.

    This problem is the denial of sensitivity.

    We often associate sensitivity with weakness, but when we learn how to manage our energy and emotions we can actually become more controlled, empathetic, and driven.

    Most people suppress their sensitivity, not realizing that it’s a very powerful source of productive energy once they can learn how to accept it and direct it toward something positive.

    For a large portion of my life I would feel emotions very intensely, whether it was while watching movies or noticing the feelings of those around me. I guess you could say I was a natural empath.

    Unfortunately, I did what most people do in Western society—I cut these feelings off at the source, intellectualizing everything and separating my head from my body.

    However, over time I eventually learned that the more I avoided feelings, particularly negative ones, the longer they would persist. It was almost impossible to let go of things. It wasn’t uncommon for unresolved issues that I hadn’t thought about in years to come up in a dream.

    Now through meditation and mindfulness practices I’ve learned to sit with my emotions and use sensitivity to feel more joy, be guided by my gut, and employ all that emotional energy in creative and constructive ways.

    Why Do We Deny Our Sensitivity?

    According to Researcher Elaine Aron, about 15-20% of the population are highly sensitive due to the nature of their nervous systems. These people generally have an inclination toward overstimulation, emotional reactivity, and empathy.

    Whether I fall under this umbrella or not never interested me that much. What interested me was that our culture often finds it culturally inappropriate to experience or express sensitivity, even though there are millions of us living somewhere on that spectrum who could get much more out of life if we just learned to use our emotions!

    How Can You Turn Your Sensitivity into a Strength?

    There are many ways to do this, and it’s partly going to be dependent on you as an individual. However, there is an overarching point to keep in mind, and that is to accept yourself and your emotions as they are, not to repress or avoid them or to feel guilt for having them.

    Repression or avoidance often leads to what are known as meta-emotions, emotions about emotions, such as being angry because you are sad, or feeling guilty because you are excited.

    You want to stay as far away from a lot of these as possible, as they can be confusing and dangerous. Just try to experience the emotion as is and accept it for what it is.

    Recently I had an experience whereby I caught myself doing just this. I found myself in a social situation feeling frustrated with someone else’s behavior. I then became judgmental of my own frustration—it didn’t fit with my self-image of being cool, calm, and collected—and this morphed into anger at myself.

    After a five-minute dance of unnecessary negative meta-emotions, I was able to catch myself and realize that it was okay to just allow myself to feel frustrated. The person I was dealing with isn’t perfect, and neither am I.

    Sitting with Your Emotions

    Most people have a whole host of conscious or unconscious avoidance behaviors that stop them from feeling both negative and positive emotions. Their sensitivity can make it seem like the experiences are too overwhelming, so they intentionally cut them off.

    This can be something as simple as turning the T.V. on after work to avoid reflecting on the problems of the day, to avoiding commitment to a lifelong partner or drinking to numb the stimulation of complex social environments.

    In fact, one way I personally used to deal with this was to read books, particularly about psychology, philosophy, or spirituality. By doing so, I was ignoring or intellectualizing any confronting emotions I had, which gave me an excuse to ‘deal’ with them without actually dealing with them.

    I’d also find myself diving head first into new projects or jobs or even sometimes travelling to new cities, because at the time they seemed like a quick fix solution to any uncomfortable feelings I was experiencing.

    To counteract this tendency, which we all share to some degree, we need to recognize an emotion when it is there, accept it for what it is, nonjudgmentally, and physically sit with it for moment before letting it go.

    Make Use of Your Passion and Creativity

    One trait that often comes with being sensitive is being passionate and creative.

    Sensitive people are often artists, and vice versa, as they are more aware of their emotions and better able to communicate them to others through their work. Sadly, traditionally schooling tends to value science and business related skills from an early age, and so as children we may be encouraged away from our creative endeavors.

    If you feel you are passionate about something you should never shy away from following it, no matter what anyone else says. You should use any strong feelings you have as a compass that tells you what you want to be doing with your time.

    Take Breaks and Reflect

    Sensitive people often tend to be very reflective. If they spend too much time in intense environments (which is most of the time in large cities) they can become overwhelmed.

    We can use this to our advantage by engaging in reflective practices such as journaling, and allowing ourselves time to let our batteries recharge.

    By taking specific time out of our day to stop and think, whether that be at home or in nature, we can become more aware of our situation and the subtle nuances that are impacting us in our day to day lives.

    Suppressing our sensitivity is never a healthy option. If we can learn to manage it with these practices we can use it to our advantage and allow it to become one of our biggest strengths.

    How have you managed your sensitivity? Have you found any ways that help you to use it to your advantage? Let us know in the comments!

  • How We Can Use Our Painful Emotions for Good

    How We Can Use Our Painful Emotions for Good

    Sad girl

    “The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy.” ~Meryl Streep

    Growing up I spent a lot of time on the Internet browsing websites and looking at images. One image that stuck with me as a child showed an old man lying on a hospital bed, with tubes running into his mouth. In his hand, he held a “no smoking” sign.

    As I stared at that image I began to think what it must be like to face the horrible consequences of failing health. I imagined the pain, the regret, and the desperation for a second chance. He wouldn’t get a second chance, though.

    I lost myself in that moment, becoming the old man. Embodying his pain, regret, and his desire to warn others as a way to ease his pain. I learned through his experience, instead of my own, not to smoke.

    Deconstructing the Lesson

    By seeing the old man on his deathbed, we understand his mistake intellectually. However, through empathy, we can learn much more deeply. Through empathy, we create a painful association in our mind, much like classical conditioning, to a behavior.

    This experience led me to avoid cigarettes because I associate them with pain, regret, and desperation. The old man used his painful emotions for good: He gave others a chance to learn from his mistakes. Now, I want to share my story, so that others can learn from my mistakes.

    Painful Emotions

    In middle school, I dreaded gym class. Not because I hated exercise, but because having the entire class stare at me while I finished the run last was humiliating. Being overweight most my life, this was my reality.

    For me, being overweight made me feel that people didn’t want to be seen with me. For me, running was reserved for other people. Being overweight meant low self-esteem, low confidence, and shame; I hated it.

    Unlike the old man, I still had time to change.

    Each night after dinner, I would grab my mp3 player and go outside for a walk. The mp3 player had songs that stirred up my emotions and gave me motivation.

    Focusing on all the pain that comes with being overweight, I drove myself to change. I vividly imagined myself finishing last, over and over. I decided that would never happen ever again.

    Night after night, I walked and walked. Finally, I started to ride my bike, and slowly, I started to notice I was losing weight.

    Months later, on a walk home, I decided I was going to run back. Running in my free time was not typical for me, as you can imagine, but surprisingly, as I broke into a run, I felt stronger than I had ever before.

    The feeling of the air rushing by me was incredible. For the first time in my life, I associated running with pleasure. It felt like I was flying, so I put my arms out like an airplane and smiled.

    Deconstructing the Lesson

    A lot of people say exercise takes discipline, but I say it takes empathy. In my story I empathized with myself—my future self. I wanted a better quality of life for myself in the future.

    I wanted an escape from all the painful emotions of being overweight. I didn’t even know what it was like to feel the air rush by when running. Being in shape showed me that being overweight feels like you are cemented to the ground by comparison.

    The purpose of my story is to shed light on being overweight. If you are healthy, don’t take your health for granted; don’t go through what I went through.

    I enjoy this quote by Tony Robbins: “Success doesn’t just show up one day. Failure doesn’t just show up one day, it adds up from all the little things. Failure to make the call, failure to check the books, it’s failure to say I’m sorry. It’s failure to push yourself to do something. All those little failures add up and one day something cataclysmic shows up, and you blame that, but it’s because all the little stuff added up.”

    We don’t just run once and say, “Alright, I’m fit for life now!” Each day we make the little decisions that add up to our outcomes. I learned that lesson the hard way, but I used my painful emotions to bring positive change.

    Sharing Your Painful Experiences

    By sharing our stories, we give others a chance to learn from our mistakes instead of letting them learn the same way we did. Viktor Frankl is a great example of this kindness.

    In his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl chronicled his experiences as an Auschwitz concentration camp inmate during World War II. He describes how we all have freedom over our minds, and how we can leverage that freedom to decide the meaning of our experiences.

    Viktor decided that he would survive the concentration camp to make sure that something like this would never happen ever again. That decision to give his experience an empowering meaning gave him the willpower he needed to survive.

    Deconstructing the Lesson

    Sharing our painful stories with each other is not being weak; I believe it’s being strong and considerate. I believe that we should not be ashamed to be vulnerable and share our darkest times.

    We can choose to use empathy to learn from others and help them, and we can use our painful emotions to help others learn from our mistakes. Both approaches give painful emotions a new usefulness in our lives.

    For example, if we find ourselves grieving the loss of a loved one, a breakup, or other unfortunate event, we can decide the meaning of our experience, as Victor Frankl did.

    We can change the meaning of losing a loved one from loss, to discovering a new appreciation for all the loved ones we still have. Similarly, we can change the meaning of a break-up from disappointment, to new opportunities and insight.

    Just as I imagined the pain of being overweight to bring positive change, imagine the consequences of prolonged grief. If we don’t change the meaning of these tragedies, our life may begin to suffer.

    If we re-live the breakup over and over, we may decide to never open up again, for fear of another disappointment. Imagining the pain of living life that way can serve as the impetus for change.

    In the same way as I did, we can imagine the emotions our future self may feel if we don’t make a change.

    Through these events, we grow in our ability to control our emotions, and to help others who will inevitably face these same challenges.

    While we wouldn’t desire these emotions, nor seek them out, we can view them as learning experiences for ourselves, and others. In Man’s Search for Meaning, we learn that through our suffering we may discover our purpose in life.

    For Victor Frankl, his purpose is to share his story to ensure that nothing like that ever happened again. For me, I want to share my story to show that our painful emotions can be used for positive change.

  • Happiness Starts with You

    Happiness Starts with You

    Happiness starts with you

  • How to Instantly Calm Yourself in Stressful Situations

    How to Instantly Calm Yourself in Stressful Situations

    “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” ~Viktor Frankl

    There’s a big lie we tell ourselves during stressful times.

    It keeps us feeling lost, afraid, and unloved, like we’re being picked up and carried away helplessly by a storm.

    Our heads can fill with scary images, words, and stories about the cause and who is to blame for our unwanted pain.

    Sound familiar? If it does, you’re not alone. You’re normal. This is how humans biologically respond to stress.

    So what’s the big lie?

    The big lie is that we have no control over our stress response. Actually, we do. A lot of control.

    I’ve struggled the hard way through my fair share of troubling times. I’ve experienced money and job issues, battled with health, and been pushed in challenging relationships.

    But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is I grew up a highly sensitive person, who would internally react to almost anything that could be interpreted as negative.

    Of the feelings above, I hopelessly sat at the “feel all of them” end of the scale.

    That was until a particularly trying relationship caused me so much stress and anxiety that I became sick of my unconscious reactions, and vowed to do everything possible to stop it (or make it easier).

    Through research and a lot of experimenting I created a practical way to calm myself down instantly anywhere, anytime, when a meditation cushion or reassuring book was out of reach.

    The technique was so simple and powerful that it pulled me through a harrowing experience in that relationship, and has held me together in plenty of experiences since.

    It’s easy to remember, has an instant effect on your mind body, and most importantly, is simple enough to be remembered and used when you’re going through the eye of your own stress storms.

    How to Calm Yourself In Two Minutes

    Take a moment right now to make yourself comfortable and try these four steps yourself:

    1. Freeze yourself.

    Remember the game you played as a child when you suddenly stopped mid-motion, like you were frozen in ice? Do that now. Halt your body parts, emotions, and thought processes. Think of yourself as a cartoon character that’s been hit with a stun gun. You can even make it a little dramatic if it helps.

    2. Focus on your index finger.

    (Skip to this if you find the first step difficult). For twenty to sixty seconds, concentrate solely on the back of your index finger. Let your mind and body be consumed by it.

    Bring it closer to you. Study the rivets, creases, and those tiny little fingerprint lines. If your situation is noisy, let the sounds around you merge into a single background buzz, and let it fade out of your attention.

    3. Take a conscious breath.

    Let go of your focus and check back in with your body. Take a deep, conscious breath in, then let it go through your mouth, slowly and calmly, creating a wave of relaxation that starts in your chest and floats out through your being to the surface of your skin.

    4. Look around consciously.

    As you re-integrate with your surroundings, scan the scene in front of you. Remain as indiscriminate as possible with what you focus on the way you would when waking up in the morning.

    Take conscious note of the thoughts that are trying to push back into your head and observe them with an attitude of curiosity.

    How do you feel?

    You might now feel a little more in touch with your senses, distanced from previous thoughts, and connected with the present moment.

    Most importantly, you’ll recognize that the root of your discomfort is your thoughts. Everything else, like emotions, and physical discomfort, and pain, start there.

    If you’re having difficulty slowing down the mind at the beginning, try this: If you meditate regularly, spend the last minute of your session focused on the same finger, in the same way. Doing this will associate (or anchor) the feelings of clarity, relaxation, and attachment with the action.

    And if you don’t meditate, it’s a great time to start! It will help with your ability to cope with stressful situations generally, and dramatically improve the effects of this technique.

    Why This Technique Works

    Stress is a mental or physical tension, and both manifest from your relationship to the procession of thoughts in your head.

    Mindfulness allows you to step out of the procession and watch it go past, without being carried down the fast-flowing river.

    When we get pulled down a heavy stream, our emotions and bodies react as if the danger or pain contained in the thought is real, immediate, and must be dealt with now. That’s why we feel discomfort even when someone reminds us of a stressful situation we were trying to forget.

    Reconnecting with the present reminds us that here is the only time there really is.

    Focusing on your hands is an ancient Ayurvedic practice that helps to ground the soul and provide stability in the physical body.

    Try It for Yourself

    The most important reason this technique works is it gives you something back—control.

    We may not be able to choose what happens to us in our lives, but as Viktor Frankl says, we can always choose our response.

    Give it a go next time you feel yourself panicking (and be sure to let us know how you go in the comments below).

  • 10 Surprising Reasons To Stop Trying To Please Everyone

    10 Surprising Reasons To Stop Trying To Please Everyone

    Girl in darkness

    “Lean too much on other people’s approval and it becomes a bed of thorns.” ~Tehyi Hsieh

    Let’s be honest with each other.

    You’re a people-pleaser

    So am I.

    And so is Oprah, the President of The United States, and the guy next door.

    We’re all people-pleasers to some extent. And that’s okay. Wanting to be approved of—and loved—is as natural as wanting food and shelter.

    It’s when you try to please everyone that it becomes a problem. In fact, more than a problem, a disease. Harriet B. Braiker called it “the disease to please.”

    And it’s making you ill.

    Why?

    Because you want everyone to like you. To love you.

    You dread disapproval. Pleasing everyone seems to be the answer, the safe way to inoculate yourself against conflict and confrontation in relationships, whether family, friends, or work.

    So you fail to speak up, fail to say what’s on your mind, fail to allow yourself to be the real you.

    Instead you become the go-to person:

    • The one who will always take on more work and stay late.
    • The one who will always say yes.

    The one who never says no.

    The Disease To Please

    I know exactly how that feels.

    From what I wore to where I lived, I couldn’t live with anyone’s disapproval, so I spent my days stressing and second-guessing what to do or say.

    But every time I sought someone else’s approval, a little piece of the real me died inside.

    And it made me ill. Which was ironic, as my cure to conflict and rejection of always saying yes never worked anyway, for reasons I’ll explain later.

    Oh, help!

    How was I ever going to make it through life with that much stress and anxiety every day?

    But the alternative seemed impossible. If I gave up saying yes to everyone and every request, if I put my needs before theirs, if I stood up for myself and learned to say no, they’d reject me, surely? There’d be rows, repercussions. They’d disown me.

    The very idea was enough to bring on a panic attack.

    But by now I was literally sick with the constant anxiety and stress over what to say and do, over who to be. I had to do something. So I set out to understand why the disease to please had taken over who I really was, why it consumed me.

    I soon noticed that there were those who seemed immune to this disease. Indeed, many of the people I was constantly trying to please said what they thought, did what they wanted and yet were still popular, loved, respected even.

    And not despite standing up for themselves, but seemingly because of it.

    I started taking notes from them, learning ways to stand up for myself, to give a straightforward answer, to say no. It wasn’t easy at first, and I still need to check myself to stop falling back into my old people-pleasing ways to this day.

    But the amazing thing is, there have been very few rows or repercussions. And far from disowning me, apart from a few people who were better out of my life, I am more liked and respected than I ever was before.

    This week, for instance, I said no to my boss…without passing out in fear! I politely refused to do something I felt strongly was an unfair request. Standing my ground that morning removed a situation that had been hideously stressful for three years.

    And far from falling into a fire pit of angry responses and reprisals, my boss simply respected me the more for speaking out.

    Are you trying to please everyone? Are you afflicted with the disease to please?

    Read on to find out why it will never bring you the approval and love you seek and what to do instead to reclaim the real you and cure yourself.

    Why Trying to Please Everyone Doesn’t Work

    1. You attract people less.

    I had always looked up to anyone who had the strength to go out and be themselves. But all too quickly that admiration would turn to adulation. I found myself never speaking up, always going along with whatever they said and did, the eager puppy on their heels.

    And then, when I looked dispassionately at how they really saw me, there was one overriding word that hit me—weak. Strong people seek strong people to be around, so it was not surprising they were polite but always chose their true friends elsewhere.

    2. You love yourself less.

    Because those very people you wanted to admire, respect, and love you now reject you, you tell yourself that you cannot be a lovable person. In desperation you increase your people-pleasing behavior and it becomes a depressing spiral.

    The gap from the way you act to the way you really want to act widens with every people-pleasing act. This leaves you feeling disappointed and ashamed of who you have become.

    3. You become more manipulative.

    I would often feel resentful when a friend or colleague was asking for yet one more favor. They seemed to be manipulating me, taking advantage. Boy, that was hurtful.

    But you know, once I’d looked logically at the way they treated me, I realized it was more down to the way I’d treated them. I’d set the rules for their behavior toward me. I’d been the one to say, “Hey, that’s absolutely okay, go ahead.”

    In reality, I’d actually been the one doing the manipulating. Gulp!

    4. You’re seen as less trustworthy.

    Always agreeing or saying the “right thing” seems to be well-intentioned, but however you dress it up, hiding what you think isn’t telling the truth. And as humans we hear alarm bells when we sense that someone is being false.

    It might seem like just a little white lie to flatter someone’s ego, but would you trust someone who only ever told you what you wanted to hear? Someone who hid their true feelings?

    5. You end up with less confidence.

    People find you untrustworthy because you only tell them what they want to hear, so they are hesitant to confide in you. So you never know what they are really thinking either, which leads you to feel less confident in dealing with them.

    6. You end up with fewer friends.

    Trying to please everyone is rooted in the fear of rejection. The irony is, because you end up seeming less attractive and less trustworthy, the very people you are trying to get approval from are often the people who reject you. Maybe not to your face, but in their hearts.

    Without intimacy, relationships wither and die. And no one wants to be intimate or vulnerable with someone who hides their true feelings.

    8. You end up with the worst of both worlds.

    And what happens if you are trying to please two people who do not like each other? If you ingratiate yourself with one person and offer friendship, how do you now please that other person without un-pleasing the first? How do you decide who to please?

    It ends with up both of them disliking you as they believe you must be betraying them behind their backs. Who wants a two-faced friend?

    9. You become more resentful.

    I have found this out for myself: you end up resenting the very people you’re trying to please. You feel they are taking advantage of you. However, when you are being honest, you also beat yourself up for trying to get them to like you by putting their needs before your own.

    You imagine they only like you because you say yes to their every whim. And in truth, you have no real way of knowing whether this is true or not, so you become more and more resentful of them.

    9. You hate the things you used to love.

    Again, this is something I found from personal experience. For instance you may love cooking, maybe making cup cakes. So you offer to cook some as a way of getting love and appreciation.

    But soon you are either cooking them all the time for one person or, once again, you become the go-to person and you end up cooking them for everyone. What used to be an enjoyable pastime now becomes a chore you hate.

    And you’re not even sure any more if people actually like your cup cakes or if they are just seen as something free and easy they don’t need to put any effort into. Which is how you think they see your relationship with them.

    10. You fail to please the one person that matters.

    But the most important reason to stop trying to please everyone has nothing to do with everyone and everything to do with just one person—you.

    Trying to please everyone is tied into the fear of rejection and the fear of failure. But the biggest failure in life is failing to be yourself. And the biggest rejection in life is rejecting yourself.

    By trying to please everyone, you make both these fears come true.

    Cure Yourself Of The Disease To Please

    Trying to please everyone is a disease.

    Learning to be the real you, to stand up for yourself, to say no, is the only cure.

    Make a promise to yourself to start today.

    Gently and with kindness, tell just one person no. .

    Not everyone will like or love the real you, and that’s okay. You can cope; you are stronger than you think.

    Because when you stop seeking the approval of others, you’ll find that you never needed it in the first place.

    The world doesn’t need another insincere people-pleaser, the world needs the real you.

    So step up and let the real you shine.

    The world’s approval is waiting for you.

  • How to Promote Yourself Authentically to Gain New Opportunities

    How to Promote Yourself Authentically to Gain New Opportunities

    Self Promotion

    “If you really put a small value upon yourself, rest assured that the world will not raise your price.” ~Unknown

    I have always been a smart, dedicated, hard working person. I was raised to believe that those were characteristics required for success. So imagine my surprise to reach the working world and find unexceptional colleagues getting promoted above me.

    There’s one memory that particularly stands out.

    When I was twenty-five, I was on a team that consisted of amazingly smart, ambitious, hardworking people, plus one mediocre guy, Tom. His mediocrity stood out amongst a high-achieving team, but Tom thought he was a rock star.

    Infuriatingly, all the right people noticed Tom. And they didn’t notice me.

    In hindsight, the biggest difference between Tom and I was our mindset around self-promotion. We were both ambitious, but he was willing to push for it. Meanwhile, I was waiting patiently for my turn.

    I couldn’t get past the idea that self-promotion was sleazy, manipulative, or desperate, so I refused to do it. I didn’t go in to a meeting with sweaty palms ready to ask for the promotion that I wanted. I just did nothing.

    I waited and hoped that someone would notice how hardworking and deserving I was. But it never happened. I lost out on opportunities that would’ve helped me make a bigger difference and feel more fulfilled in my work because I refused to raise my hand.

    Now, I’ve built my career on my skill for authentic self-promotion and have found tactics to promote myself in ways that feel in perfect alignment with who I am. These are the things I’ve learned along the way. I hope these work for you, whether you work for yourself or have a traditional job.

    1. Find a role model for authentic self-promotion.

    You can probably picture the kind of person that you don’t want to be when you’re promoting yourself. But do you know whom you do want to model your self-promotional behaviors after?

    Look out for examples of people that promote themselves with honesty, integrity, and personality.

    One of my role models once told me a story about going to a networking dinner and being pestered by someone who wanted her to quit her job and come join his company.

    When her boss asked how the networking event was, she said: “It went well. I got offered three jobs. Actually, I got offered the same job three times. See how in-demand I am?”

    She told me that it felt like a light-hearted way for her to tell him that she’s highly sought after. It both matched her cheeky personality and how they usually interacted with each other every day. If she tried to do it any other way, it would have seemed awkward and insincere.

    Your mindset around self-promotion will dramatically change once you start looking for positive examples of people who practice authentic self-promotion. You’ll be surprised how many role models you can find.

    2. Remind yourself how self-promotion can help you make a difference.

    Self-promotion has a bad reputation for being egotistical. But it’s only egotistical if you’re solely focused on what it can do for you. Try focusing on how it allows you to help more people.

    How many more people will you be able to help if you promote yourself and more people discover your work?

    How will landing this new job or client help you make a bigger contribution to the project?

    Getting the job or landing the client gives you the opportunity to change their lives or business for the better.

    Thinking about how your work makes a difference takes the focus off you so that you feel less egotistical and reminds you that your work (no matter how menial you may think it is) helps others.

    3. Realize that no one else is paying as much attention as you are.

    In the past, I believed that if I truly deserved that new opportunity, then the people in charge would have already offered it to me. But that’s rarely true.

    They have a lot on their to-do list and it’s easy for them to forget everything that you do. That’s why you need to regularly remind them, whether it’s a boss or a client.

    All it takes is getting into the habit of a quick knock on the door to say, “I just wrapped up that project and wanted to let you know about the great feedback we’ve had so far.” It can be casual, honest, and low pressure. Don’t be afraid to let them see how valuable you are.

    4. Ask yourself how satisfied you are with your work right now.

    Feeling the need to raise your hand for new opportunities is a sign that there’s something missing from your current work. By raising your hand and advocating for yourself, you have an opportunity to find greater fulfilment in your career with minimal effort.

    Ask yourself: what kind of projects would bring me more job satisfaction? Then, proactively ask for those projects.

    Employers love it when their employees are engaged and fulfilled by their work, so there’s a good chance they’ll want to hear what you have to say. It’s helpful to you and it’s helpful to them.

    5. Approach it like an equal.

    I noticed that one thing that I disliked about self-promotion was feeling like I was asking for more than I was offering. It dramatically lowered my confidence and triggered the quivering, insecure voice that’s a dead giveaway that I’m nervous and unsure.

    Now, before I even start on the path toward authentic self-promotion, I get clear on what I want and what I will bring to the table that is of equal or greater value than what I’m asking for.

    It removes the feeling of powerlessness and helps give me confidence that I’m making a difference with my contribution. Even better, it means that I can easily explain how I’ll make a positive impact for my boss or client.

    6. Notice what your fear of self-promotion is masking.

    Your fear of self-promotion masks something much bigger. It could be fear of success, failure, judgment, or not being good enough. You’re not afraid of self-promotion itself; you’re actually afraid that if you promote yourself and it doesn’t go well, it’ll prove that your real fear is true.

    For me, I’m usually afraid that I’m not good enough to get that big project or land that new client. If I raise my hand, promote myself and get rejected, it can feel like evidence that proves my fear—I truly wasn’t good enough.

    What is the underlying fear for you? Where does that come from? When you dig deep into what the fear truly is, you can start to question its validity and build your personal growth muscles.

  • The Benefits of Minimalism: 7 Reasons to Declutter Your Life

    The Benefits of Minimalism: 7 Reasons to Declutter Your Life

    Minimalism

    “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” ~ William Morris

    Have you ever noticed that every time you move you need a bigger truck than the last time you moved?

    People love to collect things, and we have a tendency to keep collecting things in order to fill the available space in our homes (and sometimes beyond).

    I’m a firm believer in the idea that material possessions do not equate to happiness, so I recently started to explore the idea of living a minimalist lifestyle, to see if a less cluttered home would result in a less cluttered mind.

    I concentrated on decluttering each element of my life by reducing the amount of material possessions I owned and removing those that were unnecessary. This allowed me to focus on those items I valued most.

    I followed the seven steps below to declutter my possessions:

    Step 1: Categorized my possessions in order to sort through them one at a time (clothes, shoes, bags, jewelry, cosmetics, electronics, books, etc.)

    Step 2: Gathered together everything I own from one category, so I could see the true extent of my possessions.

    Step 3: Immediately discarded anything that jumped out at me that I no longer required.

    Step 4: Analyzed all remaining items to identify whether I loved them. After careful consideration, I discarded anything I didn’t love or need.

    Step 5: This was a step where I pushed myself to be more ruthless. I questioned whether I really truly loved the things in my “keep pile” and removed a few more.

    Step 6: Tidied everything I had decided to keep neatly away.

    Step 7: Gave everything I wasn’t keeping to friends and charity shops and sent some things for recycling.

    The process of removing all material possessions I no longer required from my life taught me a number of lessons:

    1. Mindful purchasing

    We purchase many items on a whim, with little consideration of need or desire. What a waste of money to buy something you may not even particularly like!

    A thorough decluttering session teaches you to be more mindful of a purchase and analyze its importance before spending your hard-earned cash.

    When decluttering my clothes, I came across several items that still had the labels attached. I found it really difficult to part with these, as it felt so wasteful given that I had never worn them. This was a great lesson in ensuring that from now on I will only buy items I am sure I will definitely wear.

    2. Money saved from unnecessary and frivolous purchases

    Restricting purchases to only necessary items has the added benefit of saving cash. My biggest overspend in the past has been on clothes.

    Since I have significantly reduced my clothes shopping, I have saved a considerable amount of money. This money has helped to fund my true passion of travel and exploring the world.

    3. Time saved by being able to find things more easily

    Reducing your possessions allows you to find items more quickly, saving precious time.

    No longer will you have to hunt through a stash of necklaces but easily choose one from the small collection you have retained. No fishing around among a mountain of handbags or rooting through hanger after hanger of clothes. The choice is quicker and easier.

    4. Space saved from owning less

    The fewer possessions you own, the less storage space you need.

    Since doing some serious decluttering, I now need half the space I previously did. I am currently looking to move to a smaller apartment, as I now have far too much room for one person and could happily live somewhere much smaller.

    5. Happier outlook

    Surrounding yourself with items you love and displaying only the items most valuable to you will make you feel happier. You won’t have to search through lots of items that you don’t like. Favorite items won’t get lost at the back of the cupboard or the bottom of the drawer.

    Gone are the days of saving your favorite things for a special occasion. Every day is a special occasion now that I am only using the things I love and my life is happier as a result.

    6. Quicker and easier to clean and tidy

    The fewer possessions you have, the neater your house will be and the easier it will be to keep clean.

    Marie Kondo, the decluttering expert, advocates the philosophy that each possession has a place and you should know exactly where to find everything. This is only possible if you reduce the amount of your material items. Now my living space is cleaner and tidier, my mind is less cluttered.

    7. More freedom

    As you begin to detach from material possessions and place more importance on experiences rather than things, you will sense a feeling of lightness and freedom, which can become addictive.

    I love this new sense of freedom I feel from no longer being surrounded by piles of unnecessary items I never use and being less attached to possessions. This allows me to focus instead on people and experiences.

    Now it’s your turn. Choose one category to start with and focus on the seven steps. See how it makes you feel. Try to dispose of unwanted possessions responsibly.

  • The Power of Doing Nothing When You’re Frustrated or Anxious

    The Power of Doing Nothing When You’re Frustrated or Anxious

    Stressed man meditating

    “This ‘doing nothing’ is not a cold, passive resignation, but is a luminous, sacred activity, infused with presence and a wild sort of compassion. It is a radical act of kindness and love.” ~Matt Licata

    I am storming home after work.

    The important men in my life are driving me bonkers—they’ve been self-important, disrespectful, condescending jerks.

    My dad doesn’t see the value in the work I do, and my partner blew off our date to take an important phone call. My younger brother leapt off of the phone with me, which he’s been doing every time I’ve called in the last year.

    I am taking furious, short breaths, and hardly noticing each step.

    My mind races with things I could say to show them just how in the wrong they are. I rocket between being spiteful and feeling sorry for myself.

    A woman my age walks toward me, carrying two bags and nursing a baby. I move aside to let her by and accidently make eye contact with her little girl.

    She gazes at me unblinkingly, no expression on her small, round face. She doesn’t react to my momentary presence in her world; she just looks at me.

    Our eyes meet for only a moment, and then they are both gone. That look has stopped me in my tracks and drained me of all my struggle. I’m standing there on the sidewalk, feeling totally empty of the fury that possessed me a few seconds earlier.

    That emptiness makes me lightheaded, and I stand for a moment, swaying in the dusky light. I’m suddenly aware of my breathing, of the tightness in my abdomen and hands. For the first time, I notice what a whipped-up tower of smoke and rage I’ve become.

    I make eye contact with myself, as if I’m now the wide-eyed babe, lying on my mother’s chest.

    I’m filled with compassion for myself. I become aware that the anger I was feeling is also anger at myself for not hearing and responding to what I want—for putting my needs last, for being judgmental and self-righteous.

    This awareness washes over me in a wave of feelings, more so than thoughts. I experience anger, sadness, and finally the comfort of being heard. Someone is listening to me—I am listening to me.

    . . . . .

    I regularly encourage my girlfriends to take more time for themselves, to move more slowly through choices and transitions, to make space in their heads to really hear themselves.

    I don’t want to wait for a wide-eyed magic babe to spook us back into our own experience. I want us to be intentional about it.

    Through meditation, I can sometimes create space to hear myself. But many of my friends are fast-paced, creative women who have a hard time sitting still. Meditating is simple, but not easy, and especially for these active types, “doing nothing” is something that has to be eased into.

    Walking has been an incredible space-creator for me, as has writing.

    At the beginning of both of these pursuits, I am filled with chitter-chatter—the daily bushwhack through the swamp of self-judgment, fear, and worry.

    By being intentionally aware of my surroundings when walking, and my words when writing, the fog of my heavy thoughts begins to lift. Eventually I am purely in the experience—noticing the birds and the flowers, and the feeling in the bottoms of my feet, or simply connecting word to word, sentence to sentence.

    To maintain a connection to the physical world around me and the spiritual world within me, I practice both writing and walking for an hour every day. Sometimes, it’s an uphill battle and I end up feeling totally defeated. But most days, at least a shimmer of my true self shows up during my practice, and I feel blissfully at peace.

    . . . .

    The lesson I learned that evening, when I saw the baby and her mother, was that how I’m feeling just is.

    Most of my frustration and anxiety comes from trying to fix the way I’m feeling, to somehow “solve” it. As soon as I settled into the experience of being angry, the anger itself just sort of melted away, and my true desires became apparent.

    A friend and I were recently speaking about “looking straight at things” rather than seeing them out of the corner of your eye and avoiding them. We were discussing negative body-talk, anxiety about work, and the emotional discomfort that often leads to overeating.

    She told me, “If I could just look straight at the part of me that wants a bowl of cereal, I would see that I’m actually nervous about an upcoming presentation.” The urge to eat more when she’s already full is disguising the discomfort of feeling over her head at work.

    My intense anger at the important men in my life was disguising the true discomfort that stemmed from over-working myself, not prioritizing my own self-care, and putting others’ opinions of my life before my own.

    A curious experience with a tiny stranger was enough to shock me out of my thoughts, bring me back into my body, and allow me to really hear myself.

    That moment reminded me how to be present and to give myself the time and space to understand my inner needs.

    I extend this same reminder to you: In whatever way is easiest for you, start being present to yourself by doing nothing. I challenge you to lie on the couch, sit on the bench, or meditate; allow space for your true hopes and fears to bubble up into your conscious mind.

    As Matt Licata says, this is a “radical act of kindness and love,” and we each benefit from showing ourselves that loving kindness.

  • 3 Relationship Myths (and Why We Need to Stop Believing Them)

    3 Relationship Myths (and Why We Need to Stop Believing Them)

    “Love isn’t always perfect. It isn’t a fairytale or a storybook. And it doesn’t always come easy. Love is overcoming obstacles, facing challenges, fighting to be together, holding on and never letting go.” ~Unknown

    When I started dating, I idealized love. I had many false notions about relationships, which I formed from my friends, watching movies, and reading romance novels. Many of the beliefs I had about how relationships should work caused me pain and disappointment because reality turned out to be different from what I expected.

    Dating became a journey of resetting my expectations and letting go of false beliefs. In order for me to find love, I had to let go of the myths I had around relationships.

    Myth #1: Opposites attract and make for more lasting long-term relationships.

    I found myself drawn to men who were very different from me during my early stages of dating. They were the stereotypical bad boys who rebelled against authority, the ones with a wild independent streak who were emotionally unstable.

    These were the type of men I was attracted to. They made my life exciting and helped me expand my boundaries. I thought opposites would create a balanced relationship, making for an ideal union.

    Luckily for me, none of them worked out. Looking back, it would have made for a bumpy, unstable relationship.

    We’re fascinated by people who are unlike us because they represent parts of ourselves that we’d like to let out and explore. We tell our friends we can’t help who we are attracted to, but often we are attracted to people who are wrong for us.

    While it’s true that we can complement each other with some differences—if, for example, one person is more laid back and the other is more Type A—couples who are more similar have longer lasting relationships than those who are complete opposites.

    Dating someone similar means we get the support and validation for our core life values. There will be fewer disagreements on the most important issues and opinions that shape our lives.

    Core life values may be spiritual, religious, social, family, and health-related. Taking a closer look at what you prioritize in your life and where you invest your time will tell you your values.

    This also means that having similarities lead to more positive feelings because of the reciprocity rule in relationships: we like others who are like us.

    It’s exciting to date someone who is the opposite of you at the beginning. But as the relationship progresses two people with different life values will start to separate and head down different paths.

    Opposites attract like strong magnets for the short term, but if you’re looking for the long term, it’s similar core life values that will keep you together.

    Myth #2: You should be honest about your deal breakers upfront to save time.

    The other day I went to lunch with one of my friends, who is a serial dater with profiles on three different dating sites. He dates several women at a time and sometimes goes on three dates a day.

    When he tells me how the first dates went, it usually starts with the women initiating several rounds of questions, which then turns the date into a mate interview.

    Are you close to your family?

    Have you been married before?

    How many kids do you want?

    I know I have done the mate interview on a first date before, so I understand why these women were questioning him early on.

    When I was tired of just dating, and looking to get married, a friend told me to be open and upfront about it, because “you don’t want to waste your time with him, so you want to make sure you are on the same page. And if your honesty scares him then he is not the right person for you.”

    This piece of advice could not have been more wrong.

    Yes, it’s important to be honest and be on the same page for a sustainable long-term relationship, but letting them know all of your standards and requirements on the first couple of dates is just too much information.

    No one wants to waste time in relationships, but interviewing someone shows that you’re more interested in getting what you want from them than getting to know them.

    When I was trying to figure out if they would make a good parent or partner, I was screening them and testing them. I went from having fun and being lighthearted on the date to turning into an interrogator. I was limiting myself to a small pool of candidates who were ready to answer these kinds of questions, thereby limiting my chances at finding love.

    By being upfront about your deal breakers, you may not even find yourself in a relationship in the first place, because you quickly screened out perfectly good people who had the capacity to be a devoted partner but didn’t show it on the first date.

    Myth #3: Having conflict in a relationship means you’re headed for a breakup.

    I am terrified of conflicts or any type of disagreements, which is probably why one of my strengths is the ability to always find agreement in groups, no matter how much they differ in opinions.

    I formerly believed that fighting meant you’re not compatible with each other and it won’t work out. This was why I thought that love meant never having to fight and I was terrified of conflicts.

    In my earlier relationships I dealt with fights by ignoring them, pretending they didn’t happen, and stonewalling, where I just didn’t communicate or just walked away. I thought the problem would just disappear and we could return to a normal state of things, as if it never happened.

    I remember when I suppressed my feelings, I experienced random outbursts of crying because I was so frustrated with pent up emotions inside that I would eventually crumble at the slightest stress.

    After reading a lot of self-help books and talking to my friends, I figured out that avoidance was not healthy for me, nor the relationship. It dawned on me that because everyone is unique, our differences will lead to disagreements and conflicts.

    When you are choosing to be with someone in a relationship you are choosing a unique set of problems that cannot be solved. It’s important to learn how to deal with it, because conflicts can bring you both closer afterward.

    So I learned that having conflict is actually healthy for a relationship. It shows that you are being honest about issues that are important to you rather than headed for a breakup.

    —

    Changing my view on these three beliefs altered my success in dating. It helped me to grow to have more realistic views of love and be more aware of how much my mindset impacts how I define what love is. I hope shattering these relationship myths helps you as well.

  • Do You Constantly Think and Worry About Your Relationships?

    Do You Constantly Think and Worry About Your Relationships?

    “When you say ‘yes’ to others, make sure you’re not saying ‘no’ to yourself.” ~Paulo Coelho

    Sometimes it’s easy to define ourselves by our roles and relationships.

    We can look at ourselves as a daughter, or someone’s employee, or so in so’s husband. These things mean a lot to us, and we often subconsciously use a variety of behaviors and mental constructs to protect these roles and relationships.

    It can take form in innocuous ways, like buying clothes you don’t really want or feigning interests in order to fit in. (Go sports team!) But it also affects more serious things, like how we view ourselves, what we think we’re capable of, and what goals we pursue.

    A common theme in movies is the mid-lifer who suddenly realizes they’ve made all of their decisions in life to please other people. It’s reflected in the zeitgeist so often for a reason—because it’s a common occurrence, and an easy trap to fall into.

    My realization that I was doing this started taking shape with several ah-ha moments over the last several years, but it became palpable during an entrepreneurial workshop almost a year ago.

    We all were assigned a personality test to take at home before returning the next morning. Mine said something like: You think with your heart and are excellent at building thriving relationships.

    I thought that was a lovely-sounding result, but the next morning I got a bit of a jolt from the woman putting on this portion of the workshop.

    “Ah, you’re a blue!  You constantly think about yourself in relation to everyone else.”

    “I do not,” I replied, embarrassed.

    “But you do. What are you thinking about when you fall asleep at night?  Your relationships. You wonder if everyone’s okay. You wonder how you affect others. You wonder what they think of you.”

    I must have been nodding, because she said, “See? That’s thinking about yourself in relation to everyone else. Their approval means a lot to you, and that’s how it manifests in your mind.”

    That irritated me in a huge way.

    I ignored her for the rest of the day, fuming about how someone could say something so mean—and because of a silly little test that didn’t say anything about wanting approval! I was still thinking about it when I got home, all riled up with indignance.

    Then it hit me. I’m a fan of Jungian psychology. I’m not an expert or anything, but I like the way that dude thinks.

    He espouses the philosophy that our irritations and overreactions point to key truths about ourselves; when something or somebody really gets to us, it could be because it’s pointing to a truth about ourselves that we don’t want to see.

    I had noted people-pleasing tendencies before, and I had made great strides! I no longer fake-laughed at things that I didn’t find funny.

    I no longer thought of others, or their judgments, when making personal style decisions. And I no longer cared about being as thin as others, after struggling with eating disorders for years.

    These things were a big deal to me, and it took focused effort to make these changes. I thought I was done! Then some random person goes pointing out the other-focused thought constructs in my brain like she can see them? What the what, man? Pssssch.

    I tried to ignore it. Tried to pretend that it wasn’t there. But once something like that is pointed out, life tends to keep pointing it out to you.

    I eventually leaned in and decided to do something about it. I’m a lover of meditation and mindfulness in all forms, so invented a mindfulness game of it.

    I started watching my mind for other-oriented thoughts, and then I imagined shooting them down with the gun from the 80’s Nintendo game, Duck Hunt. Pew! Pew! I shoot them thoughts right down:

    Imagining an argument with a family member: Pew! Pew!


    Comparing myself to someone else: Pew! Pew!


    Wondering how I’d explain myself for doing something: Pew! Pew!


    Overanalyzing lack of reactions to my Facebook post: Pew! Pew!

    (A few things that don’t count: non-judgmental relationship reflection, hoping people are happy, and forgiving others and myself.)

    It might sound silly, and maybe for you it would be, but for me, it’s worked wonders.

    It’s helped me find my center. I feel like my whole life I’ve been off, getting tossed about in the storm of others’ wishes, real or imagined; flung around in subtle manipulations, others’ or mine; and thrashed into the ground by judgments, spoken or merely assumed.

    The benefits of cultivating a centered perspective like this are immense. For one thing, it leaves us free to cultivate inner-direction—to focus on the things that really matter to us, the things that we love to spend time on, the things that make us sparkle.  

    I’ve discovered that we can adopt a centered-perspective as homebase. It had been there the whole time, this calm and peaceful mind, this quiet in the eye of the storm.

    I had frequently visited it, usually while meditating, or by way of painting, or even via chore lists done in a zen-like fashion; but we can learn to operate from this place all the time.

    My mind still swerves into the storm, but less and less. It’s noticeable, and feels odd, far from being a filter for life or a perspective to see it from, like it was before.

    And once we spot mental constructs in this way, we stop identifying with them, and they can’t sweep us up like they used to. They lose power as new neural pathways are created, bringing with them new ways of thinking and of approaching life.

    Try to spot your other-focused mental constructs going forward. Recognize when you’re dwelling on arguments, comparing yourself to others, or looking for their approval, and shift your focus back to yourself. Find your center.

    Know that you’re more than how you affect the people around you. You’re more than what other people think of you. If you can focus a little less on who you are in relation to everyone else, like me, you might find yourself less stressed and far more fulfilled.

  • What to Do When You’re Having Trouble Making New Friends

    What to Do When You’re Having Trouble Making New Friends

    “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.” ~Albert Einstein

    I’m sitting on the couch by myself watching Dexter reruns on Netflix. But I can hardly focus on the show. I’m freaking out because I still haven’t made any friends, even though I moved here over a month ago.

    I keep thinking to myself: “Will all my Saturdays look like this?” “Will I actually be able to make new friends and build that social circle I was so excited to have?”

    Let me rewind just a bit.

    It’s a hot and sunny summer day in Southern California.

    After hours of Tetris-like packing, my Toyota Corolla is packed to the brim with everything I consider important. My guitar amp has clothes stuffed in the back of it. Even my snowboard is upside down, forming to the shape of the roof.

    I should be exhausted from packing, but I’m not. I’m beaming. Smiling from ear to ear, I can’t wait to start a new chapter in my life.

    With a new promotion in hand, I am given the task of opening a new office in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I have never even been to New Mexico before, but I am ecstatic to meet new people and create new life experiences. So I hop in my car and make the fifteen-hour drive to begin my new adventure.

    I’ve arrived in New Mexico, and I am high on life in the high desert of Santa Fe.

    Life is great. I’m loving the delicious, authentic New Mexican food and the warm monsoons with crazy lightning. I’m spending my time getting to know the wonderful city of Santa Fe.

    More than a month goes by and, just as monsoon season is ending, I’m all settled in and enjoying my job. However, the excitement of making new friends and living the dream is starting to disappear. Actually, it’s starting to turn into fear.

    I’ve never felt so lonely in my life.

    Day after day, anxiety slowly grows deep inside my body. When will I start to make new friends? Will I ever even make any friends here?

    The fear of loneliness is eating me alive. Especially because I didn’t think that this would be a problem at all. But it’s making it hard for me to focus on anything but my inability to make friends.

    I know that if I want to meet new people and make friends that it is up to me. I need to take action and be proactive. The only problem is that I don’t really know how.

    But I try anyway.

    I muster up the motivation to go to a public pub crawl on a Saturday night and tell myself that I am going to turn things around and move toward my social goals. When I finally realize at the end of the night that I only spoke to one person the entire time, it only deepens the pain and stress.

    As bad as it seemed and felt, some good things were taking root even though I didn’t know it at the time. I had been on a self-help kick for quite some time and was constantly reading and doing what I could to improve my life.

    By some stroke of luck and beautiful timing, I got my hands on the book Yes Man by Danny Wallace. In it, recently single Danny was falling into isolation and loneliness until he decided to say yes to everything, and in the book he recounts the events that unfolded.

    In short, he met tons of new people, did a bunch of crazy things, and had one hell of an adventure.

    I read the entire book in one day—quite a feat for me. I may not have known it at the time, but this was a pivotal moment in my life. It fundamentally changed my beliefs and the way I look at life.

    I was missing opportunities left and right.

    My problem wasn’t an unwillingness to do new things; my problem was how picky I was being about the things I chose to do. I would turn down going to music in the Santa Fe Plaza because, “eh, that music doesn’t seem to interest me.” I would turn down an invite to hang out with someone because, “he didn’t seem that cool.”

    But then, after reading Yes Man and deciding that I need to be way more open to new experiences and new people, I decided to be much less picky.

    I hung out with a forty-year-old Texan I met through email and went to a strange and interesting event called Zozobra. I went to a college football game in Albuquerque (definitely not my wheelhouse) and to the Santa Fe Wine and Chile Festival. I also played darts with some people in the back of a cigar club.

    On a Monday evening around 8:00 PM, rather than calling it a night and turning down an offer to go to a BBQ at a friend of a friend’s house, I went. But it wasn’t easy. I still had all those thoughts running through my head: “it’s late,” “you’re tired,” “you have work tomorrow,” “just go next time,” yada yada yada.

    This time, though, I decided to say yes. Even with the knowledge that I had to find my way around the ridiculous streets of Santa Fe, which don’t seem to make any sense whatsoever.

    When I arrive, the friend that invited me meets me out front and shows me in. He introduces me to the hostess who was throwing the BBQ. Fortunately, I’m welcomed with open arms.

    I’m offered dinner, but go straight to dessert (5:00PM is much closer to my dinner time). I sit down at the table and start to talk with a group of six people. I get to know them and they get to know me.

    They seemed cool, although I didn’t think they were anything special. I got a couple numbers at the end of the night and went home.

    The seeds are sown.

    Over the next month, I slowly started to hang out with these new people. One of them invited me to go bowling with his friends. Another invited me to get drinks with some people.

    The momentum kept building and eventually I met a bunch of new people and was doing new things regularly. Before I knew it, I had a core group of five really good friends, and was talking to and hanging out with many others. Things were finally starting to turn around.

    Even though I didn’t think they were anything special right when I first met them, they ended up being some of the most amazing people I’ve ever met. Truly great friends—the type that bring soup to your house during their lunch break when you’re sick.

    Had I continued to judge people before getting to know them, I would never have made the friends I did. Coming from Southern California, I had a much different style and culture than the people I met. I could have easily just asked, “are these really people I want to become friends with?”

    Or, after meeting everyone at the BBQ, I could have shrugged them off and not hung out with them the following times.

    Well, deciding to say yes was the best decision of my life. It’s been almost four years since I left Santa Fe and moved back to So Cal, and I’m still good friends with those people. I’ll even see many of them at my wedding in September.

    This whole process taught me so much. Particularly, that it’s the person on the inside that is much more important than what you see on the outside. The person that you get to know over time, not in the first few minutes you meet them.

    And I’m not saying that just to be sweet and nice. People that I would have typically judged as “not my type” ended up being some of the coolest people I have ever met. Those are things you don’t realize the first time you meet someone.

    What Saying Yes Looks Like

    When people are inviting you to do things with them, you want to be reactively saying yes. Otherwise, you will need to be proactively saying yes by finding your own opportunities to meet people.

    Proactively say yes: Be proactive and find new things to do, while doing your best to meet new people when you are doing them. This can be joining a book club, an adult-league soccer team, or a weekly board game meet up. It can be volunteering or seeing a band at a local bar.

    It can also mean finding people online and emailing them, or going to the disc-golf course and pairing up with others. The goal is to find new experiences where you can meet new people, and then say yes to yourself by going!

    Reactively say yes: When people invite you to do different things with them, say yes. Although you might not be sure if you really like the person yet, or you don’t think the event or activity is something you’d have a lot of fun doing, do it anyway. And do it with the intent of getting to know the people you go with and meeting new people while you’re there.

    Being open to new experiences and new people changed my life dramatically for the better. If you are having trouble making new friends, wherever you are, you might want to consider saying yes more often.

  • 4 Things You Need to Know When Pursuing An Ambitious Dream

    4 Things You Need to Know When Pursuing An Ambitious Dream

    Dreamer

    “So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.” ~Christopher Reeve

    Have you ever decided to pursue something that excited you, that seemed really hard to do, and then had your will tested and almost crushed? I have, many times, most recently this year.

    As you may recall, I shared a blog post in January about the newly formed Tiny Buddha Productions, a film company I started with my fiancé, fellow screenwriter Ehren Prudhel.

    If you haven’t read that post yet, you may want to read that now. Go ahead—it’s here. I’ll wait.

    Welcome back! A lot has happened in the six months since we decided to make a short film about loneliness and connection.

    We’ve faced delays, and drama, and disappointment. We’ve questioned ourselves, our idea, and our potential. And we even considered scrapping the whole thing when it all seemed far harder, and success far less likely, than we once imagined it would be.

    But we’ve pushed forward, in spite of the fears and the discomfort. We’ve waded through the guck of insecurity and uncertainty. And here we are, about to start filming our first short film tomorrow.

    As I sit here with a goofy perma-grin on my face, I’d like to share a little of what I’ve learned over the past six months.

    If you’re pursuing a dream, and feeling overwhelmed, uncertain, self-doubting, and scared, perhaps some of my lessons will help.

    1. There’s no shame in being green.

    I knew going into this there was a ton I didn’t know. Although I’d studied acting and writing in college, I didn’t study screenwriting, and I had no experience producing a film or working on a set.

    In addition to what I didn’t know, there was a lot I didn’t know I didn’t know—stuff about permits, and insurance, and securing locations. Every part of this has been a learning process for me, and that can feel incredibly vulnerable.

    It’s easy to feel insecure and embarrassed when you’re working with experienced people and you feel a little ignorant.

    But when I took my ego out of the equation and stopped worrying about what other people might think of me, I realized how fun it is to be at the beginning of a journey.

    It reminds me of when I was in college, and I felt excited about everything—being on campus in Boston, meeting new people, learning from them, getting to share my work, and imagining possibilities for the future.

    Would I feel more confident if I were an expert? Sure. But there’s nothing like the enthusiasm you feel when you’re just starting out. Some day I will be an expert, and I can only hope I’ll maintain this electric passion I feel right now.

    If you too are at the beginning, remember: This feeling won’t last forever, so soak up the best and don’t worry about the worst. No one loses respect for someone just because they’re new. If anything, they highly esteem people who are embarking on an exciting but challenging new journey—especially if they’re not just out of college.

    More importantly, your experience is worth far more than their perception, so enjoy every part of this new path. This is what life’s all about—trying things that excite you and feeling giddy, nervous, and passionately alive. Let yourself bask in it.

    2. Setbacks are part of the process.

    As I mentioned, it’s been almost six months since we decided to do this short film. We originally planned to shoot in in the spring, after speaking to lots of people and hiring a director, who was going to bring his own crew onboard and edit.

    With the most important hire in place, I ran a T-shirt campaign to raise money to fund the film. And then the setbacks began.

    The director—who, I should add, is a wonderful person, who we’d be fortunate to work with—said there were too many locations. So we re-wrote the script.

    Then he told us the budget was still too small, so we increased it, to much more than we originally expected we’d spend.

    Then, after much back and forth, with all our eggs in his basket, he had to back out due to personal reasons.

    As the months went on, I began to feel like the girl who cried film. I’d already publicly announced the project on the blog. I’d run a fundraiser. And there we were, seemingly back at square one.

    For a while I got myself worked up and discouraged. I had no idea how to move things forward with our first project, and I also knew it would be just a small step on a much larger path. But then Ehren and I regrouped and decided that the setbacks weren’t failures; they were part of the journey—to be expected.

    We didn’t need to feel bad about them. We had to view them as par for the course—simply part of the process of doing something new and difficult.

    So often we get down on ourselves when things don’t go as planned. But it’s nearly impossible to make a smart plan when you’re learning as you go because you have no idea what each step will entail. The only thing you can reasonably expect when you’re doing something new is the unexpected.

    The good news is, the unexpected isn’t always bad. It’s usually in putting out mini fires that we learn and grow the most. Every step of a new journey is a classroom—and remember, people pay good money for an education.

    So don’t let the setbacks get you down. See them as signs you’re moving up, because they are, in fact, a part of the process.

    3. It helps to hold yourself accountable.

    I wrote that blog post introducing Tiny Buddha Productions for a reason: I knew that this would be hard. But once it was out there in writing, and because we also told our friends and family, it felt nearly impossible not to follow through.

    I could lie to myself and say I didn’t really want this that bad, but I’d already made it abundantly clear, very publicly, that I did.

    Reading that post has kept me motivated when I’ve felt like giving up. It’s reminded me that this means something to me, and it’s worth pushing through my discomfort to make it happen.

    Tell people what you aspire to do, and not just casually, in passing, like it’s not that important to you. You want this. You dream about this. If you’re like me, you lie awake thinking about it, and it pops into your head first thing in the morning and when you wake in the middle of the night.

    You care—a lot. And it feels vulnerable to admit that, especially since everyone will know if things don’t work out as you hoped they would. Don’t let that deter you.

    Not only does sharing your intentions keep you on track, it also inspires others to do something about the faint murmur they hear in bed at night and when they open their eyes.

    Everyone has something that blows their hair back. Remind them what it looks and feels like to go for it. As the saying goes, “Enthusiasm is contagious. You can start an epidemic.”

    4. An experience can be worth so much more than it costs.

    We raised quite a bit for this project, because filmmaking is incredibly expensive. (In fact, I was shocked to learn how much it costs to make five minutes of film.)

    When I shared with a loved one how much we raised, she questioned if perhaps we should pocket the cash or spend it on something else. “Why spend that money on something that might go nowhere when you could just keep it?” she asked.

    Well, I’d positioned the T-shirt campaign as a fundraiser, so that’s one thing. But more importantly, I knew this experience would be far more valuable than what it would cost.

    Ehren and I each have our own reasons for wanting to do this, and wanting to do it together. His reasons are his to tell. For me, this is more than a project; it’s the beginning of an exciting new life.

    It’s a way to connect with who I was before healing consumed me; an opportunity to create something that will hopefully make an impact; and a chance to do something collaborative instead of spending so much time working on my own, from my computer.

    That’s why I’m doing this film, and I hope many more after it: it’s something I need to do for myself, and want to do with Ehren. If that’s not worth the cost, what is?

    I realize I’m incredibly fortunate to have a means to raise money, and that not everyone has that same advantage. But we all have the ability to invest in ourselves—whether that means a portion of our savings or a portion of our time.

    We all have the potential to put some of what we have toward what we want to create. I know, it can be scary to do it. You can think of a million and one reasons not to use your limited resources.

    There are no guarantees. It might not work out as you hoped it would. People might say, “I told you so.”

    Yes, those things are true. But things could actually turn out better than you’d hoped. And if they don’t, this could be the first step on a different journey you don’t yet know you want to take.

    You don’t need a guarantee to know that taking a risk—stretching yourself and coming alive—is worth it, no matter where it leads.

    —

    Having a dream is a lot like being that little man on the moon, in the picture on top. You know you can fall, but it doesn’t matter, because you’re lost in the music and the view. I’m lost in mine right now. What’s yours?

  • How Dealing with Our Emotions Can Help us Heal Chronic Pain

    How Dealing with Our Emotions Can Help us Heal Chronic Pain

    “The part can never be well unless the whole is well.” ~Plato

    Our bodies are clever. They constantly send us messages that something isn’t right. It’s our job to tune in, listen, and act on these messages.

    That headache, tight shoulders, and backache are all trying to tell us something. But sometimes the physical symptoms we experience are actually tied up in a deeper emotional pain that needs to be dealt with first.

    How do I know this? It was a message I needed to learn, one that I now teach to others.

    Six years ago my life fell apart. Within an eighteen-month period my marriage broke up, I lost my house in a devastating earthquake, and I had to walk away from my physiotherapy practice that I had poured my soul into for four years.

    At the same time I was also experiencing chronic shoulder pain. I was suffering from regular headaches, sciatica, and insomnia. I sought help from a number of different health practitioners. At times I would get temporary relief, but it never lasted.

    As a physiotherapist I knew I was doing everything right to heal my physical pain, so I could not understand why I wasn’t healing.

    Not only was my physical health a mess during this time, but I was also an emotional wreck!

    I felt like a failure. I was ravaged with guilt. I was scared of what the future held. And my self-esteem was at an all time low. I had stopped eating and sleeping. My weight had plummeted and I looked terrible.

    It wasn’t until I stumbled across Louise Hay’s book, Heal Your Body: The Mental Causes for Physical Illness and the Metaphysical Way to Overcome Them, that I began to gain a better understanding of the relationship between our emotional and physical health.

    This one book was the catalyst for change and healing. I realized that if I wanted to heal myself from chronic pain, I was going to have to dig deep to get to the core of all the challenges in my life.

    It was the start of a journey that wasn’t easy and it wasn’t pretty. A lot of the time I wanted to bury my head in the sand. I have always been one to brush emotions to the side. “I’m fine” was my tagline.

    But as I did the work, three key themes became clear.

    First, I had no sense of self-worth. I didn’t see myself as important as other people. I would give everything I had to everyone else and nothing to myself. If I did, I would feel guilty.

    I also have a Type A personality, I’m a high achiever, and I’m a perfectionist. I would constantly push myself to the limit, and the pressure I put on myself was immense.

    Lastly, I realized that I constantly compared myself to those I perceived to be living the perfect life, and I always came up short.

    I recognized that the pain I was experiencing was my body’s way of telling me I needed to slow down, take pressure of myself, and start taking care of myself.

    I knew it wasn’t going to be easy to change my ingrained habits and beliefs, but I also knew that if I didn’t my body would start screaming louder until I ended up seriously ill.

    I started by making small changes. I began to gather knowledge from others. I took what worked for me and discarded the rest. I experimented and added in what made me feel well and healthy.

    Sleep was the first thing I made a priority. I had never realized how important sleep was. It’s the time when our bodies repair and rejuvenate. One good night’s sleep doesn’t help us heal; consistently sleeping well does.

    Self-care was the next thing I needed to address. I had previously thought self-care meant hour-long bubble baths, a day at the spa, or a week’s vacation in the sun sipping champagne. But I came to realize it didn’t mean any of those things.

    I realized that the small things I did throughout my day were just as important—like taking five minutes in the morning to meditate before starting my day, making sure I had prepared a nourishing lunch, spending ten minutes cuddling my dogs after work, and reading a chapter of my book before I went to sleep.

    Small things, consistently done over a long period of time, made for big change.

    I also realized that my body had been sending me the message that my life had been out of balance for years. But I had lost the ability to tune in, listen, and connect with what it was saying.

    I started practicing a simple technique that consisted of meditative breathing, scanning my body for discomfort, and then asking what it was trying to tell me.

    Whenever I would feel discomfort in my body, I would ask myself, “If this pain was an emotion, what would it be?” If I answered “sadness,” I would then ask myself, “What is going on in my life right now to make me feel sad?”

    I would then use practices, such as journaling, to help me work through, and release, whatever was causing me to feel sad, lonely, or fearful. With time, my emotional well-being improved, and so too did my physical symptoms.

    So what are the physical signs that your emotional health may need attention? Here are just three examples that you may be able to relate to:

    1. Tight, tired, and painful shoulders.

    When I meet people with this problem, they often have a similar story. They believe that they need to be, and do, everything for everyone. They are literally “carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders.”

    2. A stiff neck.

    People with stiff necks have trouble turning their head to one side. They’re often dealing with someone close to them making a choice that they don’t agree with. This decision has hurt them and they are finding it hard to “turn the other cheek.”

    3. Back pain.

    While disc ruptures are not uncommon, most people present with muscle spasms. Again, there is often a deep-rooted emotion playing out behind the scenes. In this scenario, it often pertains to money and finances. Their finances are restricting them from doing the things they want to do (as is their back spasm!)

    Our minds and body are so closely connected. But in today’s world, where we are so overstimulated, we have become completely disconnected with ourselves.

    Instead of tuning in to our body to find the answers, we tune into Google.

    Big life stuff (as I like to call it) happens. There’s no escaping it. Even everyday life can cause us to feel stressed and overwhelmed.

    If we don’t learn to deal with our emotions in a healthy way, they become boxed up within our body, until they are expressed in physical pain or illness.

    If you are someone who experiences regular physical pain, and you are aware that your emotional well-being may be one of the reasons for this, then I encourage you to start healing by journaling on the following questions:

    Does your life feel stressful at the moment, and what is causing you to feel this way?

    What is one thing you can let go of, even just for now?

    Do you feel overwhelmed, and what do you keep saying yes to that you could begin saying no to?

    Are you taking on the emotional loads of others in your life? So often we want to help or fix those close to us, but it’s important to remember that they are on their own journey.

    Are there any stories from your past that you are holding on to that need releasing?

    Are “you” last on your list of priorities? If so, how can you make a little more time for yourself?

    Learning to tune in and listen to your body’s messages is the first step toward preventing long-term physical damage. I encourage you to start doing this now, before it ‘s too late.

  • When Mindfulness Hurts: Feeling Is the Key to Healing

    When Mindfulness Hurts: Feeling Is the Key to Healing

    “You start watching your breath and all your problems are solved. It is not like that at all. You are working with the heart of your experiences, learning to turn towards them, and that is difficult and can be uncomfortable.” ~Ed Halliwell

    Can mindfulness be bad for you?

    I had been expecting it: Once you become a regular at it, mindfulness permeates all aspects of your life.

    I only sit in meditation for twenty minutes daily (and a full hour on Sundays), but I carry its effects with me the rest of the time, elevated levels of awareness and all.

    This is not to say that I constantly float on a blissful cloud. In fact, this sudden increase in mindfulness, even for someone used to deep introspection and resolutely committed to lucidity, comes at a certain cost. What I hadn’t expected was the actual weight of mindfulness.

    Three months into the daily practice of mindful meditation, I had to admit that it was not solely eliciting the deep serenity I had hoped for. In fact, I realized that in some ways, I actually felt less happy than before.

    I couldn’t precisely put my finger on it. All I knew was that things seemed heavier, more raw. How could that be? Wasn’t mindfulness supposed to help me transcend the vicissitudes of life? What was I doing wrong? Was I the only one in that odd situation?

    I decided to do some research. It didn’t take long before I discovered evidence that mindfulness can indeed have “side effects.”

    A quick online search showed me that I’m actually in very good company. Mindfulness, and the practice of meditation, has reportedly entailed significant “downsides” for a number of enthusiasts.

    We come to mindfulness in the hope that it will constitute the path to peacefulness, often unaware that this path is paved with cracked and bumpy stones. Only after stepping onto that road do you realize how uncomfortable the process can be.

    Just like therapy, meditating is difficult, sometimes painful.

    The first and most obvious reason is that sitting still, quieting the mind, and focusing on the breath presents a real challenge. Many beginners and non-beginners complain of an overwhelming restlessness or, on the contrary, of an irresistible tendency to fall asleep (I belong to the latter category).

    The second reason is that mindfulness has a way of annihilating our blissful ignorance. It offers an unexpected and unparalleled insight into our areas of vulnerability, the sides of us that we are not always prepared to welcome nonjudgmentally.

    To get the most of it, one must recognize that the practice of mindfulness is dirty, hard work.

    According to Willoughby Britton, a Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown University Medical School, the downsides of mindfulness range from mild to severe, and can manifest in various ways—from unexpected anger and anxiety all the way to depression and psychosis.

    Mindfulness can exacerbate a number of mental health conditions, bring back to the surface traumatic memories, or simply force you to deal with things that had conveniently been swept under the rug.

    Whatever your initial levels of stability (or instability), a lot can emerge in the first stages of the regular practice of meditation. Ready or not, you have to deal with it. It is disconcerting at best. In my case, it was sometimes downright depressing.

    Picture a handful of Band-Aids applied to different spots on your body. Each Band-Aid conveniently covers an injury that you’re happy to ignore (or so you think).

    Mindfulness is like peeling off the Band-Aids, one by one. It hurts.

    Then you discover what’s under them: A bad cut here. A big bruise there. The occasional infected wound. A few badly healed scars. Mindfulness makes it hard to ignore that you are, under all those Band-Aids, actually hurting, or at least not entirely recovered.

    To add insult to the injury, mindfulness has a way of preventing you from applying new Band-Aids. Things that we considered pleasant, and that help us deal with life’s vagaries, lose their appeal once we become aware of their true purpose and associated costs.

    We use, in our daily lives, an arsenal of strategies, often without knowing it: thinking patterns, daily habits, activities we view as pleasurable “add-ons,” such as eating, shopping, staring at a screen, and so on. We don’t perceive those “pursuits” as Band-Aids. Aren’t they the spice of life?

    The regular practice of meditation and a more mindful approach to life, however, sheds some light on our dependence. Any behavior that resists modification might indicate an addiction, even if it was just to chocolate, new running shorts, or social media.

    I am now, more than ever, aware of my coping mechanisms, aware that rather than making life interesting, they mostly patch up an aspect of my existence that requires attention.

    If I feel bored, tired, or stressed, no amount of sweets, sports gear, or Internet surfing will truly fill the void or fulfill the need.

    Where I would mindlessly resolve to an old habit, this new knowledge stops me in my tracks. I pause, observe, notice the underlying emotion or sensation.

    If I’m under work-related stress, such as a quickly approaching deadline, or a recalcitrant passage to translate, I will often have a sudden craving for sweets, or feel the pressing need to check my Facebook page. It’s not a coincidence, I know that now, but I needed mindfulness to realize it fully.

    Now, instead of walking to the cupboard or opening a new tab in my browser, I stay put and take a deep breath. I skip the coping mechanism and refrain applying a new Band-Aid or replacing an old one.

    Even my thought processes are modified. When certain situations repeatedly elicited the kind of stress that requires a Band-Aid, I was forced to reconsider, at least to a certain extent, the choices I had been making in various areas of my life: my career path, other types of commitments, and even some relationships. I realized I had too much on my plate and that I needed to respect my limits.

    Accepting the fact that I indeed have limits was no small feat. Even if I have long been aware of some of my “rationalizations” and “compensations,” I have never faced life with such clarity, honesty, and courage. I am proud of it. I am also unsettled.

    In spite of this, I am still fully committed to continue with my mindfulness practice. The cans of worms I am opening can be a handful, but I was carrying them anyway, and they were wearing me down. I choose to deal with them.

    Things might feel very raw, but they also feel very real. I can already sense a new level of lightness and freedom on the other side of this demanding exercise.

    I invite you to give it a try too. As we move along in our mindfulness practice, I trust that we can all find our own sweet spot, the place where an increased awareness meets a renewed sense of well-being.

    For many, this will mean starting slow. When you incorporate mindful meditation into your life, don’t go for the three-day retreat right away. Not only will it be too demanding, it might even backfire.

    Instead, simply find a quiet place where you can sit for at least five minutes, in silence, every day, and focus on the breath.

    You may feel uncomfortable at first, as the feelings you formerly numbed or avoided emerge. Don’t let that deter you. If you embrace the discomfort, you’ll eventually gain the clarity needed to acknowledge and heal old wounds, break unhealthy patterns, and generally step onto the path to a more authentic life.

  • How to Feel Good Enough (When You Feel Anything But)

    How to Feel Good Enough (When You Feel Anything But)

    Woman hiding

    “There are plenty of difficult obstacles in your path. Don’t allow yourself to become one of them.” ~Ralph Marston

    I recently had a personal conversation with someone who was describing some struggles they were experiencing. In passing, they mentioned “It’s okay for you, you’ve fought your battles” and went on to talk about how I’m married, I’m working in a career I love, and I’m “successful.”

    Listening to them, I could feel my heart breaking, partly for them: I know what it’s like to compare my insides to someone else’s outsides and find myself severely wanting.

    But I also felt a deep sadness tinged with frustration, because their assumption was so far from the truth.

    While I am incredibly grateful to have the relationship, the professional opportunities, and everything else I have—and it’s true there are some battles that are now in my past—there are also plenty of challenges I’m still navigating. The biggest one by far is around feeling good enough; feeling at peace and fulfilled with who I am and what I’m doing in life.

    For a long time, I used external achievement to buoy my sense of worthiness. Underneath that, however, hid a lot of shame and anxiety, because I thought I was somehow deficient compared to other people. I felt a constant need to reinvent myself and be more than I currently was to keep up with those around me.

    Feeling good enough (and defining what good enough is) has been one of my biggest struggles and something I’ve realized will possibly be a lifelong process.

    I’d like to share some of my experiences and talk about a few things I’ve found helpful for my own ongoing journey. If you also struggle to feel good enough as you are, I hope they are helpful for you too:

    1. “Good enough” looks like different things in different contexts. 

    I used to set myself up for failure by telling myself something needed to be perfect to be good enough. Now, I’ve learned “good enough” exists on a spectrum, influenced by the situation, the context and other things that are happening in life, as well as my well-being, my values, and my priorities.

    In her book Succeed, psychologist Heidi Grant Halvorson explains it’s more helpful to focus on “getting better” rather than “being good.”

    When we focus on the latter, we tend to tie our self-worth to achievement and see ourselves either as a success or a failure. With the former, we are more open to the idea that skills, capability, and achievement are malleable things we can influence with our beliefs and behavior.

    When I tell myself the story that something has to go exactly to plan or it’s a total failure, I’m less likely to try things, I’m less open to feedback that will help me improve, and ultimately, I’m less likely to grow.

    If I try something and it doesn’t work out, it might feel painful in the short-term, but I know I’ll feel much better (and prouder of myself) looking back and knowing I’ve tried than looking back at a missed opportunity.

    I’ve also learned that it’s important to define “good enough” on my terms. Other people might have different ideas about what it means and looks like, but I can’t control that. Equally, there will always be someone who is smarter, more talented, more accomplished, more X and more Y than I am. The only person it’s helpful for me to compare myself to is me, yesterday.

    2. I focus on who I want to be more than what I want to achieve.

    Unhooking my self-worth from external achievement is still a work in progress, but one of the things I’ve found most helpful is focusing on the bigger picture. Sometimes this looks like asking myself, “How important is this particular thing going to be to me in ten years’ time?” (Usual answer: not very!). More often than not, it involves shifting from thinking about doing to being.

    While many of us place a huge amount of stock on external achievement, there are usually many variables beyond our control that influence the outcome of a situation. Even if we do our best and do everything right, we might still feel “not good enough” because those external variables mean we didn’t get the gold star or top prize.

    What we do have control over, however, are the qualities we embody. When I find myself slipping into “not good enough” thoughts, I find it helpful to stop and ask myself: Who do I want to be today? This reminds me I want to show up in my life as a creator, not as a victim, with compassion, not judgment, and calmly and wholeheartedly, rather than fighting an internal war.

    3. I focus on all the things I’m getting right (as well as the things I think I’m getting wrong).

    My inner critic is a champ at highlighting all the things I’m doing wrong and all the ways I could improve, usually with a big helping of shame and judgment on the side. A big part of my journey has been learning to turn down the volume on this part of my internal dialogue and turn up the volume on the part I call my inner mentor.

    My inner mentor is also good at pointing out things I could improve, but she does it with a very different tone.

    She is also a lot more question-orientated (while my inner critic throws statements around like confetti) and tends to ask open-ended queries like “How could you approach that situation differently in the future?”

    She also balances constructive criticism with acknowledging all the things I’m getting right too.

    I encourage my inner mentor with simple exercises like keeping a “have done” list (as opposed to a “to do” list) and taking time each week to reflect on positive experiences, new opportunities, things I feel proud of, and lessons learned.

     4. I remember just because I think something doesn’t mean it’s true.

    Like my companion at the beginning of this post, I can feel very alone when I’m in the grip of a “not good enough” episode.

    During these times, and especially with the prevalence of curated social media feeds, it’s easy to look at other people’s lives and make all kinds of assumptions and judgments about how well things are going for them, even feeling a teensy bit resentful about how challenging our life feels compared to how easy theirs seems.

    Having spent the best part of the last decade working with emotional support in one capacity or another, I’ve realized that “good enough” is not the result of circumstance, achievement, money, or success.

    The Latin root of the word compassion is “suffering with.” Everyone feels like or fears they are not good enough at some point or another. Fearing that we are not good enough doesn’t make us not good enough; it just makes us human.

    Remembering this helps me feel less alone, which enables me to start gently challenging that voice and asking “Is that really true?” “What are the other alternatives here?” “How would I respond if my best friend was telling me this?” and “Who would I be without this belief? What would I do differently?”

    Finally, I’ve learned there isn’t a “one size fits all” way to feel comfortable and enough within ourselves. There are many different paths to the same destination, and the right path for us is the one that fits our values, feels truthful, and helps us connect with whom we truly are.

    How do you navigate feeling not good enough in your own life? I’d love to hear what you find most helpful, so leave a comment and share your thoughts.